Good Shopping Trip Versus Bad Shopping Trip!

Our day went unusually well today. I managed to get all three babies up from their naps. They had lunch fairly quickly, and let me get them dressed and loaded into the car with little fanfare.

I would find out later from the tell-tale bumps on Kai's lower lip that he is allergic to his lunch which had been pesto with chicken and vegetable noodles. He didn't cry, though. He didn't swell up, luckily for me, and he was nice and sweet and good ALL DAY LONG!

All three babies were nice and chatted and sang along with my new Cyndi Lauper C.D. on the way to the big consignment sale. Nobody even fussed while they waited for me to load them into their limo-sized stroller.

I was in shock. I was able leisurely shop the sale without the babies doing any major vocal contribution. All I did was talk to them along the way about the things that they said and what we were looking at on the racks.

We only had one case of tears and it was very short-lived. Kai became very sad when Kian accidentally pulled his hair while trying to play with the long tag attached to the back of Kai's stroller seat. I gave him a quick kiss on his forehead and the tears went away magically!

I managed to spend about $100 all in all. That's not bad considering they have everything from furniture and strollers to clothes and toys (indoor & out) in there. I mostly bought Vivie some fall/winter outfits because the boys always get their cousin's hand-me-downs (everyone seems to buy for him to the point where a bunch of the clothes are actually still sporting their original price-tags!)

I found each of the babies a Christmas outfit, too. It's hard to find boy Christmas outfits for some reason.

Kai's outfit is a pair of green over-all's with a reindeer head on the front that has Christmas lights strung through-out its antlers. Kian's outfit is a pair of red plaid over-all's and has a jar of several gingerbread-men cookies on the front.

I found Vivie a blue dressie with Christmas bears embroidered on the front and smocked into the bodice. She also ended up with a few other smocked outfits as well, some are dressies, some are the long bubble suits.

We even shopped the toy department. I had hoped to run across a spring horse for the boys for Christmas, or even a ride-on truck of some sort, but alas they didn't have any this time.

We did find a sort of Tigger-in-a-box that is really supposed to be a Christmas decoration, but will serve just fine as a jack-in-the-box substitute. It also has a motion sensor on it so you don't have to push the button for him to go off. It basically will play peek-a-boo with you!

Kian made friends with a rock-star Elmo doll, so it had to come home with us as well. He is quite an Elmo connoisseur. We have a family of Elmo's at our house!

Overall, I really enjoyed shopping the consignment sale today. My kids were as quiet as I could have hoped for, and I found some really nifty clothes for them, too.

When I finally got home, husband had just pulled in the drive as well, and he offered to take the babies inside so Bregon and I could run to the grocery store for a bit, which is quite a luxury.

Bregon and I had tried shopping at Wal-mart on Sunday with the trio and didn't get so lucky as I did today! My babies had started out happy that day,. But we got stopped or rather blocked in several times early on by people who wanted to stare (not talk to us) at the kids.

A few of these people felt that they needed to BLOCK us from being able to go down the aisle or turn onto another one.

One guy parked his motorized cart in front of my stroller and blocked the whole main aisle by doing so. He finally said something to us after about three of the longest minutes ever!

I really don't normally mind meeting new people while out shopping, but Sunday a few select actions by some onlookers really caused some problems for us.

The babies got bored pretty quickly. Even Kian and his, "How-D-do's" soon tired of waving and saying, "Hi" to everyone.

This ended up in the babies resorting to OTHER ways to amuse themselves, mostly at their sibling's expense.

There was more hair-pulling, attempted maulings (biting,) and eye-poking and kicking than in a high school fight. Tears ran freely, and they got very loud very fast.

I quickly forgot whatever it was that I was there to buy in the first place, even though I had a shopping list to try and follow (which I swear I couldn't follow for whatever reason, I tried!)

I did manage to remember the blue-berry waffles which the babies have decided is their second new favorite food besides macaroni & cheese.

Unfortunately, I missed meeting one of the people from our forum by being so focused on not forgetting them. I really do wish I had gotten to meet her, too. I hope I wasn't rude or anything!

Bregon and I both finally ended up giving up trying to find what we needed when we had both tried looking at two different parts of the same produce aisle only to look up and find some lady trying to make small talk with my screaming and fighting trio.

I know she probably meant well, but she was asking them things such as, "What's the matter? Why are you crying?" And some of the people who had tried talking to them had succeeded in getting them to respond positively back to them WITHOUT tears.

This lady was NOT one of those people. What she had failed to see or notice, was the reason that they had started crying harder.

She and her buggy had been parked directly IN BETWEEN the stroller (my babies) and their MUMSY, blocking me and their brother from their sight entirely, hence the deluge of tears and increase in volume.

My babies thought that they were ALL BY THEMSELVES and had reacted in turn. They couldn't even hear me trying to talk to them because of the things she was saying to them. I know that she probably had meant well, but oh my goodness!

She was not very nice about my trying to get to them once she took notice of me, either. I tried to nicely excuse their behavior and all, but she was no longer interested and apparently was offended by my talking to her. Ah well, I can't win them all over.

I felt really bad about our shopping trip that didn't go so well. Today's experience gave me hope that maybe, just maybe it was an isolated experience.

There really wasn't much difference in the procedure or the day for the babies. So I am not sure if it was just the atmosphere and the way people treated them that made them upset that day as opposed to being happy and nice today or what.

Everyone we ran into today was really friendly and nice and nobody did anything odd like try and block us physically from going anywhere. Then again, most of these people shopping today were Mumsies and Grandmumsies and people who either had children or grandchildren.

Who knows what the difference really was! I understand that kids have their good days and bad days as well as adults too, but Sunday was pretty upsetting.

I am very hopeful that it was just an isolated incident! I suppose only time will really tell! In the meantime, if you see us out and about, do say hi (just please do not be offended if my kids decide to be cranky!)