The Walmart. How I hate that I love you.

I needed to go to the store and Walmart has the items I needed for my preschool event this week. All the items, in one spot. Considering my wild child three year old and my exhausted from adjusting to kindergarten boy were accompanying me, we had to go with the one stop shop. I really need a car babysitter for moments like these. Or grocery delivery services.

The debate began about who was going to walk and who wanted to ride. Exhausted five year old wanted to ride. Wild child obviously would never be riding. Way too restrictive for her. There happened to be a ‘car-cart’ upon entering and both kids happily hopped up. As soon as I mentioned the ‘b’ word (buckle up) wild child hopped right back down, refusing to ride. And my poor big boy was squeezed into those tiny buckles. I know… I should let him walk… but two walking is too much. They become small-medium sized tornadoes and I have to abandon cart and leave. No time for that tonight- I needed to get my list done. And this Mama is tired after wrangling small people at preschool all day.

Off we go with wild child snagging things to throw in the cart and my big boy just being awesome and chatting away about his day. We picked up plates, napkins, bowls, tablecloths,etc from the party section… and then it went downhill fast. The toy section is way too close to the party time section. G-Mae (aka wild child. Aka threenager) spotted the ‘boo-tiful Bawbies!’ and ran off to adopt one. Sawyer some sort of new barbie sized Batman and started going on about Batman excitedly. After wrangling her back over to our cart we speed walked/ran with the cart to the food area.

While G-Mae waltzed and hip hopped around the other shoppers, only narrowly escaping being run over by a cart once and tripping one lady (who thankfully did not fall down, but it was close), I managed to gather up all the required food items. With only two additional items my kindergartner ‘needed’ for lunches. G-Mae veered to the cookies while we were getting apples (WHY do they put the bakery by the produce?!?) and possibly sampled one out of a box that was not closed properly. I mean… they do give away cookies at most box store bakeries… maybe this was her silent rebellion against Walmart not giving them away. Who knows? More realistic is the girl wanted a cookie. Saw a cookie. Got a cookie. Threenagers.

Forgot to get paper, so back to the other side of the store we go. Almost done and G-mae plops down to the ground. It’s her signature move for when she needs to go to the bathroom. Some kids dance. Some kids wiggle. My daughter sits down on the ground physically preventing (or so she thinks) any urine from escaping. Off to the bathroom we go. This Walmart trip was never going to end.

Check out time…. finally. Seriously. We were there for forever and a day. Went in during the afternoon and it was night when we got out. Kind of. The good news is we got a very, very careful checker. Another translation for ‘careful’ could be insanely sloooooowww. She was very nice, and talked to the kids, but it took long enough for wild child to knock everything over on the impulse purchase shelf (fun game for me), then I put her in the cart and she reached over and wildly spun the bagging wheel, and then pushed off the register so the cart went flying forward.

One trip to the Walmart. One exhausted Mama. Two wild childs. See you in a few months Walmart. It will be that long before I forget how ridiculous this visit was.