Thursday, April 30, 2009

Crazy Day

I am officially banning my children from Michael's Craft Store. When Ellie was little, as is evident by past posts, she was a bit of a handful. She was fearless when we went to the store & would wander off/not follow me no matter how much I asked. One day (when we were at Michael's) she wandered away from me to an aisle that had flip-flops and boas. I decided to hide around the corner of the aisle to see how long it would take her to realize I was gone & try to find me.
She started pulling all of the boas & flip flops out of their respective bins & was trying them all on (for several minutes) when a store employee came around the corner & saw the mess.
I was very embarrassed & tried to explain myself as I hurredly cleaned up the feathers from the floor. I got the serious stink-eye, and I didn't go back for a while, but that was absolutely NOTHING compared to yesterday's adventure.
Today is my last day of having preschool for Sarah at our house, and I wanted to make the day special, so I am having a "Number Carnival." For one event, I thought it would be fun to let the kids get their faces painted, but I didn't have much by way of face-paint & hence made my way to Michael's.
The trip started off like any other, with Rachel wanting everything in sight, but I eventually made my way to the paint aisle. I started looking at the various colors, trying to decide what would work best, when Sarah said, "Um, Mom... Look at Rachel. I turned around & for a moment thought that Rachel had found a bottle of Pepto Bismal, but soon realized that "the one that coats" is not a medication, but a brand new bottle of pink paint.
Somehow, she had reached the paint from the cart, opened the bottle, and dumped it all over herself & the cart before I could choose one color of paint.
I forgot to take my phone, so I have NO pictures, sadly (that would have been worth more than a thousand words), but if you can imagine the Pepto commercials from years past when they show the medication covering the inside of the stomach completely, you will have some idea of what Rachel, the shopping cart, the floor, and Sarah's shoes looked like.
I had no idea there was that much paint in one bottle.
Well, there was a lady on the paint aisle who shimmied past us as I stood there dumb-founded, another 2 women saw us and walked by, but nobody stopped to help.
I told Ellie & Sarah to stand perfectly still & ran to find some help. I found a sweet girl who was restocking shelves just a few aisles away, and told her of my plight. She told me she would get something to help clean up the mess & I left to keep an eye on my girls.
When she came back she arrived with 1 wet paper towel. She handed it to me, looked at the mess and said, "This probably isn't going to be enough, is it?" and she hurried off to get some better tools.
Well, I took the one paper towel & mopped up the floor first because Sarah had already discovered how cool it was to make footprints by first stepping in the paint then walking down the floor. I did an amazing job (if I do say so myself) at making that rag work.
I then wheeled the girls over to the bathroom (which, naturally, was on the opposite corner of the store) where I met up with the employee who had brought me the first towel.
She came into the bathroom with me & took off Rachel's shoes while I took off the paint drenched shirt. When I did, I discovered that her tummy looked like a Pepto commercial, too. I threw the shirt in the sink and started using more wet paper towels to wipe down her face, stomach, arms and hands. Her pants weren't quite as messy as the shirt, so I just wiped them off while she was still wearing them, rinsed off as much paint as I could from the shirt, wrung it out as well as I could & stuck it back on her. The employee helped me put Rachel's shoes back on, and headed back to work & I spent the next 30 minutes trying to clean the shopping cart.
I have to say that Ellie & Sarah were GREAT. I told them that if they would stay by me the whole time & not cause problems I would paint their faces when we got home & they did a fabulous job entertaining Rachel & staying put, so they earned their prize.
Well, when we got home, I poured about a teaspoon of the various colors of paint on a paper plate, went into the back yard & started painting faces.
Rachel was up on the playground and I hadn't even finished the first cheek when I went to get more paint & saw a tiny hand smearing all of the colors together & smearing them on her face.
Apparently, Rachel thought she deserved to have her face painted for the second time in one day... I suppose she is more into modern-art when it comes to face painting, though.

I just found this picture online--if you multiply the mess by about 10, and change the blue paint to pink you will have some idea of what it looked like.

So that was a little bit of my day yesterday...my question is, what is the worst thing that has happened to you in a store?
I have had some serious poop issues, my grandma had my mom open powdered sugar when she was little, but I'm pretty sure this was worse than anything I have experienced (though not quite as stinky)...can anyone out there top it?

6 comments:

Janelle said...

I cannot top that and hope I never can! Wow Heather, what a day!

Maureen said...

Anna peed on the floor of a Michael's store when we were potty training. Nice. I lucked out though, I had just been to Gymboree and had bought new clothes and underwear. I just changed her when we got back to the car.

Your little episode tops mine by far.

Emily said...

Huh, I wonder why they don't have a shower at the store?

Emily said...

What I really don't get is why NO ONE offered to help!? Are we all really THAT busy and concerned about ourselves?

Aimee said...

One day, when we wire little, my brother was supposed to be napping. I guess he wastn't tired because he took al the toys out of the toy box in his room and tried to make jell-o by mixing a box of jell-o and the only liquid he had at the time... his pee!

Leslie said...

I can't top that. I couldn't decide if I should be laughing or crying as I read it.

Ok, I admit it. I laughed. You are an amazing mom to have dealt with it so well. I am pretty sure I wouldn't have gone home and painted their faces. I don't think I would have wanted to look at paint at all.

You're a saint! Those girls are lucky to have you.