Chasing a Toddler Through the Mall

I need to not only start leashing my child, but investing in the company who makes said leashes…

This harkens back to those blissful days of my ignorant belief that I could successfully leave the house with two children.  Last summer, I decided it would be a good idea to take my 3 week old daughter and newly 2 yr. old son to the mall. (yes, this is the first point when you should question my sanity).  So off we trekked, double stroller at the ready.  Popping into a couple of stores actually went relatively well…and then we hit the food court (this is the second point where you should be questioning my sanity).  For some reason, I expected my son to remain seated and gratefully dine on his Chick-Fil-A (third point of questioning sanity).  This was not the case.  After hollering at him and chasing him around the immediate area several times, I finally gave up and realized it was time to go.

I then lapsed back into insanity and thought I could quickly snag a refill on my Diet Coke (give it up for needing caffeine to rock out those sleepless nights of newborn-ness).  This was the first instance in my life of hating the Joovy for it’s inabilty to keep my son belted into immobility.  While waiting for my refill, he got bored, hopped off and took off running…My sweet baby girl was left stranded in front of the Chick-Fil-A stand while I hysterically chased my son across the food court, yelling at some strange man to please grab and hold my toddler for me (classic Mom of the Year award coming through here…).

After finally snagging my son and retrieving my daughter, the little angel started yelling, “Cookie!” at the top of his lungs (yes, imagine all the “friendly” stares of everyone around us).  Whaa??  To my knowledge, at this point in his life, he had no knowledge that there even were cookies available in the food court.  I definitely never introduced him to this concept, so some grandparent, husband or sitter took liberties and failed to fill me in…In any case, I obviously went with the cookie bribe at this point, desperate in my desire to somehow make our way back to the safety of the minivan.

We pulled up beside the cookie joint, selected our order and then…he was gone again!  My poor baby was abandoned again and my open wallet left lying by the register while I panicked-ly ran off in search of my son again…I’ll spare you the subsequent gory details and let’s just conclude by saying WE WILL NOT BE RETURNING TO THE MALL.  At least, of course, until I lose my memory and/or have a brain transplant and forget this whole delightful incident ever happened….

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Meredith

Meredith blogs at The Mom of the Year, where she dedicatedly earns her title one epic parenting fail at a time, offering quick, relatable laughs for fellow parents and all their empathizers. She has been part of several best-selling anthologies, featured on prominent sites such as Huffington Post, In the Powder Room and BlogHer, and loves her role as the Executive VP/Operations Manager of The BlogU Conference. When she's not breaking up fights over Legos and juice boxes, she remains fully committed to sharing a less serious look at the world of parenting.

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