Mall Adventure

So Friday morning I woke up and Ken was still awake. Casually he asked if we should all hop in the car and get the boys the jeans they are so desperately needing. (The hand-me-downs are all loose-fitting Husky sizes now, not a good match for my little sticks.) Needless to say, I had an opportunity to have another adult assist me in shopping for the boys? I wasn't going to pass this up, so I threw clothes on everybody and we headed out in our grubby morningness.

After dropping off Ken and the boys and parking the car, I met them inside. No more than ten steps inside the door and Ken starts flailing his arms so I stop in my tracks. Ken bends over and grabs a wadded up a twenty dollar bill that I had been kicking around unknowingly. Good luck for us, it was shaping up to be a good trip!

Anyhow, since Ken has never shopped for boy's clothes, I headed toward the cheap, slim fitting CRC's that Sears has a lifetime warranty on. Ken goes off looking at some loose fitting Polo's that have been marked way down. We had a small argument over which style the boys needed, I won, and we grabbed three pairs for each kid. Then we headed for the dressing rooms... the dressing rooms that emitted a loud beep every time you crossed the thresh-hold.

Naturally, Corey did not like this noise and he was gone. He found a rack of clothing that was as far away from the dressing rooms as possible, covered his ears and demanded that we make it stop. Well, we weren't shopping for Corey anyway, so I told Ken to worry about Corey while I dealt with Riley and Shan. I threw them each their 3 pairs of jeans and told them to get to trying them on.

Shannon whined immediately that he couldn't snap the jeans up, and I spent the next ten minutes getting the correct style of jeans for Shannon - the ones that don't snap at the waist. At this point, you would think that Riley would have at least tried on a pair of jeans but no. After I got Shannon to start trying on pairs 4, 5, and 6, I had to physically go into Riley's dressing room to see what the holdup was. Surprise, he just didn't want to try on jeans!

After a stern warning, I exited the dressing room (BEEEEEEP,) grabbed Corey, and started looking for at some winter coats for the little guy. He had to move closer to the dressing room to try them on and of course Corey fought it all the way. We tried on one coat, and then I ran over to check on the boys. Shannon looked good in his 7 slims, so I asked Riley to show me how his looked.

Riley throws open the door whining, "They don't feel right," after which Ken and I rolled our eyes at each other in frustration. "Seriously, Riley?" I questioned. "Try not putting them on BACKWARDS!" At this point I told Ken to take Corey off my hands, the coat was fine, and I went into Riley's dressing room with him until all jeans were on and approved. 9 slims were Riley's fit, but they still fell off of him so we added a belt to the pile of purchases. Jean shopping was DONE! Now, time for boots...

Lugging three boys, six pairs of pants, a coat and a wayward husband along, we headed for the elevator. (Oh, look, gloves are on sale! Lemme grab SIX PAIRS for Corey while we're at it!) As we neared the elevator, Ken and Riley see the escalator and head that way. "Hello, we've got Corey today!" I holler, assuming this will explain everything. I guess it didn't because they were on their way, and I'm grabbing Corey up onto my hip with one arm as my other arm is naturally full of everything else we'd selected, and up the escalator we go. "Just close your eyes," I whispered to Corey throughout the accent, and he did okay.

We hit the shoe department, loud as can be, and the entire selection of boys' boots fell into view. All 4 styles. Crap. So I'm looking at the boots, and I think that possibly the one style with velcro straps might actually open far enough to accommodate Corey's leg braces with the inflexible 90° angle. As I struggled to force Corey's feet into the braces, Ken yells down at me from the INFANT department, "I don't think any of these are going to work!" Gee, ya think?

Anyhow, I actually managed to get Corey into a pair of boots! This has been an impossible task up to this point, so I was thoroughly excited as we (I) grabbed everything together and head back downstairs. Then I hear it. Ken. "Corey, you're a big boy, you can go down the escalator, and you're gonna do it." "No, no, NO, Daddy!" yelled Corey as Ken took him by the hand and went to step onto the escalator. Oh boy.

Corey collapsed his legs which meant that Ken was holding a dangling Corey in the air by the arm. ("Hey, he didn't get sucked into the steps, impressive," I thought.) "I want off!" screamed Corey most of the way down, "Mommmmmmy, stop Daddy!" I'm staring off to the side, mortified, and finally Riley yells, "Just hold onto the railing, Corey!" (Riley had had enough too.) So Corey rests his feet on the semi-terra firma and grabs the railing and everything falls silent. Just as we get to the part where the escalator disappears into the floor I yell for Ken to help him off and as easy as that, we are done with the escalator.

Naturally I was ready to check out, but Daddy must browse the tools while at Sears, and since I had taken forever to find the six pairs of gloves, I let him. The boys and I chilled in the Christmas aisles which gave me time to nix the big old coat I had lugged around for the past hour; we could find Corey a better one another day. Finally we were checking out and on our way home, thank God! Then Ken says to the boys, "What do you guys want to get for lunch?"

I rolled my eyes and knew we were simply NOT DONE for the day. When will Ken learn? You just don't ask a 6, 7, and 9 year old an open-ended question! We won't bother discussing the various drive-thru window's we met with that day...