2 errands or 10?

Typically the 3 oldest kids sleep until between 8 and 8:30 every morning, not today! They all decided (except for Peyton) to get up at 7:20 clearly not ready to get up yet! Parker has been a mess all day! Nothing like starting out your morning with crying, whining kids that had they just slept until normal time would most likely be happy and at least able to function on their own. Everything has been a chore today... getting Parker to go to the bathroom takes 15 minutes instead of 2, getting everyone dressed and out the door to run 2 errands that I am dreading taking them on takes an hour and my house gets destroyed in the process, the boys are fighting NONSTOP.... While running the errands I'm playing referee, trying to keep them from destroying the store, from losing my mind, and still concentrate on the few things I ran out to get! Not only are they touching EVERYTHING in sight, they are just running out in front of people and nearly avoiding being run over by shopping carts. As I'm apologizing to the one woman, she says "No worries, I just didn't want to run anyone over", to which I say "that's ok, maybe if you did they would learn to stay with me!" She turns to me and says, "I understand, I have 5" which nearly brings me to tears, because she actually understands and ISN'T judging, much like all the rest of the comments I get from everyone!!

In the first store as we're picking out Parker's cake for his birthday party, the ladies who are "helping" me are chit chatting and telling me how neat it is that Parker likes zebras and is having a zebra party as my boys are putting their hands on every cake in the open cooler and I'm just waiting for one of them to come crashing to the floor. In my head I'm screaming at these ladies who are oblivious to the FOUR children I have and that I don't have time to stand around and chat, all while I'm spinning in circles making sure that they are all still with me and not getting into too much trouble! Can we just get on with it ladies?! Then as we get to the checkout lane, the pacifier that is keeping Piper sitting and quiet in her seat falls to the floor and the manager talking to the cashier steps on it!!! I could have cried. She offered to wash it off, but I kept my cool and stuffed it my pocket, grabbed my stuff and children and tried to calmly get them all to the car without losing it!

We get to the last store of 2 and we only have to run back and get formula and pick up Paxton's reflux medicine... wouldn't you know it, we get all the way to the back of the store and Parker tells me he has to go potty!! I could scream! It means corraling them all to the front of the store again (which is no small task and takes much more time than it should), and then going to get the medicine. After the bathroom, Piper starts spilling her snack ALL over the floor. She's eating these mini cheezits and they just start falling all over the floor; as I'm cleaning up that mess Parker decides to go through my bag and finds Swedish fish and pulls them out UPSIDE down!!! Now not only do I have to clean up the 50 tiny cheese crackers, I now have fish to clean up off a nasty dirty floor! An errand that is supposed to be taking 15 minutes is now working on 30... I go back to get the meds and they can't find them!! As they are searching, Piper is wiggling out of the seatbelt and trying to climb out of her stroller to face Paxton, the boys are running around and picking up stuff off the shelves. I finally pick up Parker, use my legs to hold Piper in the stroller, and yell at Peyton to stop messing with the pinpad for credit cards!! Finally they find the medicine and as I'm paying a man says to me, "Excuse me ma'am." and in my head I'm thinking, "great, what now?" and hands me Piper's binky (a clean one I had in the bag, not the stepped on one)! I was MORE than ready to get in the car and go home 45 minutes later! It felt like I had just run 10 errands instead of 2!

On a more positive note... I was able to snap this photo this morning. I love the smile behind the binky. :)