Looks of disgust

Saturday, Micheal and I met in Tyler with one of my best friends from Dallas. She used to live here, and then graduated and high-tailed it to a bigger city and a better job. So, we found some time we were both not too busy, and we met up together half-way between our cities. :)

My poor little child, rode all the way up there, about an hour and a half in the car, and then went straight into his stroller, because I wasn't about to let him walk around Foley's by himself. Little Micheal is usually okay with going shopping, as long as it doesn't involve too many location changes and not too much non-movement time. As long as he is continuously moving, he doesn't care. So, we got there a little before she did, so we decided to look around a little bit while waiting for her to get there. Plus, I was hoping his newfound dislike of strangers would wear off a little bit by the time she got there, since he hadn't seen her in a while.

The initial meeting between the two went decently well, but then Micheal decided that he was done sitting in his stoller. So, I let him out to walk, since I knew we were almost done.

This was my stupid mistake, but everyone has to learn something new everyday, and this was my learning moment of the day. It probably didn't help that he was probably hungry, as it was 12:30 in the afternoon, and he had had breakfast four hours before. So, the tantrum began. And, oh Lord, did it begin. My wonderful angel has never had a tantrum such as this in public before. If we were at home and he had thrown a fit like this, I would have put him down and let him scream it out in the middle of the floor in his room. And then when he was done, he could come out. Or, let him scream while walking all over the whole house, because then I'll just keep walking into a different room. This is how we handle 15-month old baby boy tantrums. He's not old enough to really understand time-outs or spankings, but we make our own adjustments in his discipline. Oh well.

So, back at Foley's... He started throwing his fit, first lying down on the floor and kicking his feet and then when I picked him, he pulled the ever popular go-limp-and-she-can't-hold-me. So, my remedy to that was to just drape him over my shoulder. Then, the little smartie-pants arched his back to try to jump backwards out of my arms. So, my friend, being the smart person that she is, offered to stay in out place in line to pay for the items I wanted, so I gave her the card I wanted to use, and showed her where my license was, and the screaming child and I could make our way to the door.

This was where the fun began for me. I knew where our car was parked, but I swear that Foley's made it so that there was no quick and easy way to get there without making many, many turns through people that didn't know how not to look at me.

It was soooo embarassing! I know that when I am out somewhere, and some poor mother is having trouble with their little one, that I am usually sympathetic and try to be aware that the face I may have on is not one of disgust or loathing, but one of sympathy and compassion for the mother. But, not one person that I passed on our way out the door had that same thought for me. Instead, every single woman that I passed by looked at me as though I should be beaten for the way I was treating my child, because I must have been beating him for him to be screaming that way. I was almost in tears by the time we got to the front doors, and the minute we got to those doors, he stopped screaming. Little terd. Once he had stopped his screaming, the only thing I could do was to sit him down in the car and tell him how unacceptable his behavior was, and how we don't hit Mommy, and how we don't scream in a store. This went over just like I was trying to tell him how to find the derivative of a quadratic function or something. It was horrible. So, he screamed all the way to lunch, and then he was fine during lunch, because he was getting to eat food.

Again, it just goes to show that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, whether he is fifty, fifteen years, or fifteen months.