Have you ever....

....gotten the stares or sometimes glares from people whenever your child is acting like a possessed tiny person?  I definitely have.  Many times.  A few weeks ago, my precious Nora decided to start screaming at the top of her lungs right when I was heading to the checkout at Target.  Her timing was perfect.  If she had started beforehand, we would have left the store and gone home but no...she waited to unleash her incredibly loud, ear piercing screams right when the buggy was full of cold items and had to be checked out.  It gets better.  As I walked down the line looking for the one with the fewest people, the cashier's had this look of horror on their face as if to say, "Please please please don't get in my line."  There was a small part of me that felt bad for them and then there was that mean part of me that decided to choose the cashier who had scowled the most.  It's only fair right?

Well...this evening's experience has now trumped the Target experience.  It's a short story but my friends with youngsters will understand.

Today was a big day for us.  We were able to go and pick up our new MINIVAN.  My best friend has compared it to a limo for Mommies and she couldn't explain it any better.  To all Mom's out there who say they would never drive one, you're crazy.  There, I had to put that out there.  I am very excited but my 4 year old is even more excited.  She decided at 4pm that she "needed to take a ride in the minivan to go get some butter."  How can I say no to that?  I was happy to just be able to smell that new car smell.  Sigh.  Nora had another idea.  She decided that she would rather throw a fit for 15 minutes for no apparent reason, or at least not one that I could put my finger on.  She stopped, calmed down and I loaded the monkey's into the "limo."  We drove one mile to the grocery store, I pushed my nifty new automatic doors, went to get Nora out of the car and that unleashed a temper tantrum that I have only seen a few times.  At this point, I was holding on to her for dear life and couldn't get to keys to open the doors back up.  The screaming was horrific.  There was a nice, understanding man in the parking lot who thankfully I have met before through friends, who offered the normal, "Don't worry.  I have one of my own.  Do you need any help?"  That was nice.  It was what happened after that made me want to crawl into a hole.  Please keep in mind that my child doesn't just cry, she wails and for an added bonus, screams so loud that it could break glass.  She was in the midst of this blood curdling screaming fit that Winn Dixie employee's decided to come outside to see what was going on.  They stood there staring at me as if I had been beating my child.  That's not to say that I didn't want to but I had an enormous amount of restraint.  It was one of those fits that you know has to play out because anything I could have done would have just made it worse or prolonged it.  I was so embarrassed.  I've been embarrassed many times but this was awful!  To have employee's come out of the store into the parking lot was just a nightmare.  Needless to say, we got back into the car and came home...without Ava's butter.  Don't worry, I took her back, alone, once her Daddy got home.  We now have butter.

If only I had a dollar for how many times I've heard, "You have your hands full" or "And you have another on the way? (as if we have lost our minds - and we have)"  I would be a very rich woman or at least be able to pay cash for my "limo."

To lower my blood pressure, I sat in my new car and just took in the smell.  It works surprisingly well.

Just in case you now only have an image of a screaming Nora in your mind, this is what my precious girl is like when she doesn't have a serious case of the grumps.