A Night of Bad Mommy Moments!

Do you ever have those moments as a mommy that you are tempted to make the selfish choice rather than the choice that is best for your child or children. And then do you ever have those moments where you actually go with the selfish choice knowing full well it could be disastrous but you feel like sticking to your selfish guns anyways? Well that is what happened to me today. I am not proud of what happened and I feel pretty guilty about it, but it was one of those stories that in the midst of it all you feel like all you can do is either laugh or cry. I laughed and maybe my eyes got sort of watery and then I definitely prayed REALLY hard!

So here is what happened. Jeff had a work dinner tonight and wouldn't be home til late, and tomorrow he will be gone before we get up and won't be home til late again. So on days like this I have to leave the house and break up the time a little bit for my own sanity. The girls and I made plans tonight to go to the mall, but of course not the mall close to us (it's a pretty scary mall and we avoid it if at all possible), we were going to go to The Woodlands mall which is a 40 minute drive. I had been wanting to go get them some flip flops from the Disney Store. Plus they love that mall and it's always fun for all of us. About one in the afternoon Adalyn started running a fever. Avery had just been sick last week and I was hoping it would stop with her. I gave Adalyn some ibuprofen and put her down for a nap. After she woke up she told me she felt fine. She was running around and laughing and seemed to feel okay (or the ibuprofen was doing it's job). I asked her a few times if she still wanted to go to the mall or if she just wanted to stay home. Okay, so here is the first thing I would go back and change. She is three, of course she wants to go and get her princess flip flops because she feels okay right now. I knew the best choice for her was to stay home, but I really wanted to go. Bad mommy moment :( . We all got loaded up and made the trek over there. As we were about 5 minutes away from the mall I remember something. I took the stroller out of the van on Saturday and completely forgot to put it back. NOT a good idea to go to the mall with no stroller when you have a 14 month old. I thought I would just rent one when I got there, but of course they took cash only and I had none with me. SO frustrating. So I put a smile on my face and headed towards the food court so we could eat dinner. We made a potty stop first. Then once I got everyone situated with their food and I had a couple of bites of my own food, Adalyn said those dreaded words to me. "Mommy, I have to go poo poo". So I had two options here. Pack everyone's food up and try to carry it all and a baby and a bag and four drinks to the bathroom. Or ask her to wait til we are done. I went with the second which sort of back fired of course. We made it to the bathroom after we ate and she wasn't quite able to hold it all. I had no other undies with me so I had to resort to scrubbing the undies with some wipes and putting them back on her. Yuck I know! Remember I have no stroller so this whole time Avery is walking around in a gross public bathroom. The whole time I was yelling "Avery, stop. No touching! Aubrey will you hold her hands so she can't get away!". It was a mess. We finally made it to the Disney Store, made our purchases of flip flops and nightgowns (I seriously drove all the way over there with a sick child for flip flops??!?!). I then made one more bad choice and ran into Children's Place because I really really needed some knit shorts of the big girls and hadn't had a chance to get there yet, plus is was right next door to the Disney Store. Adalyn then starts whining while in there saying she is tired which really means you better get going. I made another purchase and we made the long haul back to the car. By this time my arm feels like its going to fall off from carrying Avery. Adalyn then starts really crying and saying her tummy hurts. This is when that praying came into handy. "Please Lord, do not let her vomit while we are in the mall!". He must have heard my prayer because we made it to the van, and then she started dry heaving. I got everyone buckled, I handed Adalyn the trashcan we keep in the van and told her to put her throw up in there. Somehow we managed to make it home with no throwing up. She feel asleep in the car, and once we got home I put her in bed and that is where this crazy store ends, for now at least! So if I had instead made the choice that would have been better for my sick child instead of what I wanted, my night would have been so much less stressful. I felt so bad for my poor girl. We can't always have the best moments and I know I am going to make lots of mistakes as a mom. I just have to learn from them and move on. Oh and ask my poor kids to forgive me!