The Day Was Fun (But Toddlers Still Suck and Bugs Can Hurt)

Yesterday, on the way to meet a newly-van-endowed ~L~ at Molbaks (great place!), I decided to stop for crackers and cookies for the little buggers. Um, bad idea? Holy shit, the bad behavior! And Toddlerness at the head of the group! Stay in the cart? Oh HELL NO. She can undo the strappies...and cast herself right on out of that seat. Yes, cast. Or climb. And if she's not busy doing that, she's busy taking stuff off the shelves. Never fear, if I let her out, she just grabs more stuff from lower shelves. As she runs out of my range. With reckless abandon. Into the paths of other carts.

The whole grocery store shenanigan took over 30 minutes. To get two bags of groceries worth less than $20. I left my house when ~L~ left Fife, and she BEAT ME TO WOODINVILLE. What the hell.

Molbaks was a similar toddler-chasing shitstorm. Got out of there for $20-something, (oooh, maybe less, because I had to go back and get refunded for an overcharge), especially remarkable considering the whole tray of flowers I got *just for Becca* (who was very thrilled with that whole idea).

~L~s family then came to my house, where kids played and had fun with surprisingly few incidents, and mamas drank coffee and watched kids flow in and out with surprisingly few incidents. At 6 I suddenly realized it was, well, 6, and started making dinner. As I was completing that prep, GirlieG (Girliness' similar-age bud) came SCREAMING up the hill.

Of course I immediately blamed Boyness (in my brain), but the true culprit was yellow jackets...and that had hurt so much she'd gone barelling straight into the stinging nettles. Poor girlie! A bath, lots of vit. c (she chewed the not-chewable tablets! And didn't even complain! Like a particularly reliable message board participant had said, they know when they need it and just eat it, even though it's nasty), some salve, and she was well enough to sit and eat dinner. Which surprised the crap out of me, because she'd been stung on the lip. And it was quite swollen. I do believe I'd have been curled up in my bed with a handful of ice, clothed full body to keep from irritating the nettle stings, feeling sorry for myself.

Boyness got stung too, on his chest, and some sting gel seemed to help him enough that he forgot about it rather promptly. This is a relief, since the gel doesn't work worth shit on nettle stings, so it's good to know it is useful for something.