a morning in the life

Monday morning began the way it usually does:

• I get up at 4 am, feed Anna
  
• Sitting in a corner at Starbucks, working and drinking decaf by 5 am
  
• Walk back home at 7:50 am
• Kiss husband goodbye as he leaves for work, brace for three year old's full-on jump/dive into me
  
• Three year old asks, "What do you want to do now, Mommy?"
• I tell her she needs to eat breakfast, go potty, then we'll play til Anna wakes up
  
• There's a bit of protest, but that's what we do, in that order
  
• Anna wakes at 9 am. I feed her
• We go to the park. I run 6 miles with the girls (figure that's about 60 pounds to push); I'm a glutton for punishment, that's all there is to it, really
  
• Then we head over to the playground
  

On this particular morning, the playground is wet, which means Ava's shorts (and a little bit of her underwear) are wet, too. I take off her shorts before we get into the car to head home.

We're heading home when I remember that we need diapers. And sunscreen for vacation. Pete needs V8 juice. Fifty dollars, gone like that, in the amount of time it takes a traffic light to turn from green to yellow--about three seconds.

I decide I better get gas before I get anything else (there goes $3o more). With a full tank, we head to Target.

I get the girls out of the car. The parking lot, surprisingly, doesn't feel like the county fair on derby day. It's actually...calm. The sun is hot and bright and everything shiny is sucking it up and spitting it back out. We're squinting from all sides.

Ava's hand is in my hand, other hand is occupied with Anna's increasingly heavy carrier, and we three make our way across the pavement. We get to the automatic doors at Target when this little voice at my side says, "Mommy. It's okay that I'm in my underwear." Just like that--a statement, an affirmation, nothing remotely like a question.

"Well, look at you. You are in your underwear, aren't you?" Elmo and rainbows were everywhere.

We don't know what else to do except laugh, so that's exactly what we do. We laugh and laugh and laugh all the way back to the car, into her wet shorts, and back into Target. Again.

I should've just let the kid stay in her underpants for crying out loud. But this is what happens: I go into scare-tactic mode and imagine that every grown person in Target is some twisted pedophile who will find out where we live all on account that Sesame Street is currently advertised across my daughter's hiney.

So, I scold myself the entire time we're in Target for being so ridiculous. I forget the V8 juice but pick up body soap (which, it turns out, we don't need), tell Ava that, no, she cannot have another fishing pole, I don't care if it's Spiderman, that goes for chocolate milk, too, and don't you dare rip off the straw so that I have to buy it, and anyway, that does not mean you'll be able to drink it. I quickly reclaim my gentleness and gently remind her that we're going on vacation in a couple of weeks and if we always bought what we wanted, we probably wouldn't be able to afford a vacation and a whole lot of other things, like squishy bars or ice cream. This satisfies her and we check out.

Skip Skip Skip to my Lou, Skip Skip Skip to my Lou, Skip Skip Skip to my Lou all on a Monday mornin'.