Lessons from the DG parking lot...

The bad thing about using the pronoun "we" with your child is that in every statement you include yourself. This is how I learned that tough lesson...

It started a few months ago, News has a friend who is a fit thrower. This friend has been throwing one constant fit since I met him. I'm not sure he sleeps. The problem with letting Newell "play" with the fit thrower is that Newell is a mocker. He could be a professional. Most of the time Newell mocks me, he fake drinks coffee from my empty cup, he fake talks on the phone, and much to his father's dismay, he really likes strings of beads and my hairdryer. Eventually I'll break him of the last two... Anyhow, you can see where I'm going with this. Newell likes to mimick everything. And then we met the fit thrower. And while I'd like to say that I know that Newell would have some day figured out how to throw fits all on his own...right now I like to believe he picked it up from this annoyingly angry little friend. So, the first time I saw the fits I said what just came naturally, "Newell Simeon, WE DO NOT THROW FITS!" And albeit to my surprise, Newell stopped. And most of the time this works, although occasionally I have to bust out a whole little speech, which I will get to...

It started this morning, like 2am. Newell got up, threw a fit and then went back to bed until 5:30, and then was up again at 6 something. At some point looking at a clock just depresses you so you choose to get up. So, here I am my day started early, thinking of all the things I should/could get done if I tried really hard. Did I mention we have 20ish people visiting over the weekend. Yup. And what am I doing? Yes, blogging. Don't judge. SO anyway, I make a list and Newell takes the worlds shortest nap and I'm afforded a minute and a half shower that did not get to include my hair being washed so i'm living on dry shampoo, a cup of reheated coffee and a danish that I found in the pantry. Yup, welcome to my life. I have a meeting at 1 and I'm thinking that I could take my grocery list, run and shop, come home, feed Newell, grab my stuff and head over to the church office. Oh and did I mention I'm going to do this all in an hour and half? Yes, the lack of sleep is seriously impairing my time judgement. So I hit up Dollar General first. I found a surprising amount of things I both had on the list and couldn't live without so I was feeling pretty good about life as I wheeled my little cart out to the car. Ha. The car....

I load up, start the car and attempt to pull it out of park. Nothing happened. I mean nothing. I couldn't budge my gear shift to save my soul. And I should now mention that our other car is in the shop so I'm already sharing wheels with the hubby. The hubby who happens to be flying at this very moment and is not capable of answering his phone. So, I'm in the car, broken. About a mile from home. Thirty minutes away from needing to be at the meeting and...about ready to pitch a fit. And for those of you who have never seen it. I pitch a pretty mean fit. Just ask my husband about the Starbucks in Ardmore OK...ok, don't actually. So as I look at a little round face in my mirror I can hear my own words taunting me. So I just told them to myself, "We DO NOT throw fits..." I needed the whole speech. "Throwing a fit right now will not help anything and NO ONE feels sorry for you." So I had to try to fix it. And I had to look at the good things...

It was a good thing that I didn't make it to Dillons because then I would have had cold stuff in the car to worry about. It was a good thing that I had towing insurance on my car. It was good thing that I was at Dollar General who while they do not carry baby food, they did carry applesauce, toys and spoons all of which would help get Newell through a meeting and be his makeshift lunch. It was a good thing that I didn't cancel the web plan on my phone and could call the car place and the insurance guy. It was a good thing that the only person I knew who would be at the meeting called my phone last night and we were able to get a ride from her. And it was a good thing that I had to wait it out at DG for a while because it let me do a much needed clean out of my car. But perhaps most importantly, it was a good thing because I learned we do not throw fits.