just a little trip to the store...

sometimes i get a little full of myself. thinkin i'm a pretty good mom and i've pretty much got this whole thing under control. rigghhht. that, my friends, is the perfect recipe to be humbled! let me set this scene up for you: i need to make an unscheduled trip to the store, as our home phone died today and i need to replace it. so i'm just gonna run to walmart quickly. now i'm wearing my super comfy sweats, the ones i should never wear in public, because i went to the zoo today with a friend and i wore cute clothes and now i just want to be comfortable. (did you not know i have a quota of how many hours i can wear jeans? i do. it's three) so my thought process here is "it's walmart. everyone will be wearing sweatpants." my three bigger kids (i'm down one kid tonight) are still in school uniforms, so they're good to go. my darling toddler, however, has just decided to lip gloss herself as we're leaving. if you are not aware that lip gloss can be a verb, you've never seen what an almost two year old does with it! so little girlfriend is wearing a super cute outfit and lip gloss on every square inch of her self. i did wipe her hands and face off but i'm just too tired to change her clothes. luckily her shirt is white so it's totally not noticeable.
alrighty.
well, we get there and get the few needed items. but then i make the rookie mistake of walking past the packaged meat section. what? you can walk past that section without issue? well then you don't take esme with you. suddenly she is standing in the cart pointing and screaming "DOT DOG! DOT DOG!!!" like a crazy person. listen, this girl loves hot dogs. as in, it's the only food she'll really eat other than honey buns. we're really into the healthy food kick over here. i seriously have to limit her to one "dot dog" a day. so she is standing in the cart (because God forbid walmart have carts with working seatbelts!) with her dirty shirt and only one remaining pigtail having a religious experience over seeing so many hot dogs in one place. it's like her mecca. she loves them that much. suddenly, a woman approaches me. she looks like your typical walmart shopper. (i'm gonna leave it at that as not to offend anyone...)

and says "she shouldn't stand in the cart. it's not safe."

well thank you kind stranger! this is actually my first child and i had no idea that was frowned upon! all this time i've been letting her do tricks in grocery carts and live on hot dogs! i thought that was what parenting was all about! these other children? they're not mine. i borrowed them to make my grocery experience more interesting!
as we walk away it dawns on me....

i'm such a mess people in walmart feel led to advise me on my parenting.
i believe we've hit a new low.