"What Was I Thinking"

We all have those moments where we think “What the hell have I done”, or “What have I gotten myself into”.  I hit the “What was I thinking” moment this past Friday, when I decided to take all four of my children back to school shopping in Buford, GA.  My mistake- deciding I could handle all of them ALONE! What an idiot, there are four of them, and one of me!  It wasn’t until I was standing at the checkout in the new Carters store that it hit me.  I was standing there with my coupons, watching as the cashier rang up each item to make sure that they were coming up the right clearance price. The cashier was giving me dirty looks, as were the other workers in the store.  I wasn’t sure what was wrong, maybe I had a booger hanging out or something, but then I heard it, I tuned back into the chaos that was my children and I realized that it was not a booger that was the problem.  I turned around to find my four year old darting in and out of the racks pretending to be Wolverine, my eight and eleven year olds chasing each other around the store and yelling, and my 16 month old crawling around on that nasty floor, because one of his sisters had let him out of his stroller.  There were stacks of shirts thrown in the floor, clothes pulled off the racks and the nice little play area that they have to keep children occupied, yeah, they had destroyed that too. I had totally lost control.  I realized in that moment why I was receiving the “eat shit” and “you need to do something” looks from the clerks.  Any other day I would have been mortified, I would have wanted to crawl under something and hide from the embarrassment of how horribly my children had behaved, but not this day.  I was too exhausted to care.  I had wrangled them for six straight hours, alone, and I just didn’t care what anyone thought.  Then, I had an exhaustion induced epiphany; these people were looking at me through their judgmental eyes, because they had never experienced what it’s like to have four kids in a busy mall, all day, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. They don’t know what it’s like to keep up with a four year old that loves to talk to strangers, and has no problems telling them off if they get in her way or God forbid, talk to her brother.  They don’t know what it’s like to have an eight year old and eleven year old fight all day about EVERYTHING under the sun, and when they aren’t arguing, they are begging you to spend money on anything they can get their hands on.  They don’t know what it’s like to have a sixteen month old that wants to eat all day, and hates riding in a stroller.  One day though, those clerks will get married, and they will have children, and whether it’s one kid or ten, they will hit that moment where they think “what the hell have I done”.  They will be standing in a store and see their children jumping in and out of clothing racks, and crawling on the nasty floor, and chasing each other all over the store.  They will receive the same judgmental eyes that I did, and then in that moment they will remember that frazzled mess of a lady standing at the register while her children wreaked havoc all over the store that they used to work in, and they will understand.  To all those out there that haven’t been there yet, your day is coming, I promise!  So next time you see a woman looking frazzled and exhausted, offer her some words of encouragement or support, because one day you will long for a stranger to tell you that it will all be okay, and that one day it will be easier, even though you both will know that it’s a lie, because it never gets easier.