5 cup family

This culture adjusting thing is taking a little longer than I expected. In Bolivia, because the kids go to school five mornings a week, I have time to run errands alone. Which is great because it takes me less time and I can run all over town without stopping. Since being back in the US, Ben and Rachel aren’t in school five mornings a week and so the three of us have had to adjust to shopping together.

Today we were shopping. Or at least I was trying to shop for shoes for my kids. You can kind of tell its one of those days when you open the car door in the parking lot and the roll of toilet paper you use for kleenex rolls out of the car and through a puddle leaving a long white stream from the car. Then, upon picking up it to put it back, you bang your head on the car window while trying to keep your two year old from walking through the puddle and writing on the car next to you. Several times during our shopping trip Rachel got upset and in protest of not being able to get out the cart took off her shoes and socks and threw them. A couple of women who were near me chuckled, hiding their faces. I wished I could’ve laughed too, but my head still hurt from running into the car window and I had to keep a straight face so as not to encourage my two year old to keep throwing her shoes.

Next we went to the outlet mall and by this point I had Ben too. We walked into a store and Ben immediately found the kid TV in the back and sat quietly in a chair. Rachel on the other hand needed to touch all the clothes and pronounce very loudly how pretty all the clothes were. Now, Rachel is a master at taking things off the shelves or rather “lifting” items. She is better at it than the other two and so a close eye is needed (I have lost count the amount of times I find things in the cart, in her hands, or once even in my purse. I don’t often take her shopping in Bolivia for this reason). So it didn’t surprise me when I went to pay and found about 20 pairs of socks in the stroller basket. How she got them in there without me seeing I don’t know, because I watch her like a hawk. Walking around the sock display I found Rachel casually looking at hair bands. What was funny was she was taking them off one by one, turning them over, and saying, “no. back. these me.” I looked at Rachel who, in her pink and red track suit, had just noticed my presence. Standing very still she just moved her eyes so she could see me. I bent down, looked her in the eye and said, “Rachel, no more.” She very carefully set about 3 packages of hair bands back on the display and then ran, which made me chase her, catch her, and while she was screaming buckle her into the stroller. At this point, Ben started dancing because he had to use the bathroom and in his words, “Mommy you’d better hurry its starting to come out!” This made several of the moms in the store laugh. I smiled and ran with the stroller towards the bathroom. We made it with only a few bumps and bruises on my part because I kept running into the doors trying to maneuver the stroller through doors.

With a huge sigh once we were all in the car, we made it back home. We all ate lunch and now they are taking naps. I think I might head that direction myself.

Oh, and after all that we did find shoes.