Long Day...

So I spoke too soon about the tantrum bit.  Against my better judgement, I took the girls to Office Max to buy some new ink cartridges for our printer on the final day of Tax Free Weekend.

The back story: Our scanner's been on the fritz, just in time for me to sign contracts/negotiation documents for the house sale.  Since turning it on and off again for hours on end hasn't solved the problem, I turned to Yahoo Answers, where I read that, supposedly, my scanner will work again once I replace the empty ink cartridges.  It's my last ditch effort.

Back to my story.

I prep Emmy a good five minutes before we arrive, telling her that I need her to be a big girl and hold Mommy's hand in the store.  No running off.  She half-heartedly agrees to comply.

We get to the store, I load Hannah in my beloved Ergo pack and pull Emmy from her carseat.  We walk, hand-in-hand, to the ink cartridge aisle.  Just as I locate the very box that I'm looking for, she begins to attempt to wiggle free.  I hold her hand more tightly and get down on eye level to calmly tell her that she needs to hold my hand and that we'll go home just as soon as I pay the nice lady at the register.  I might as well have been speaking Chinese, because her attention was already fixated on the darn impulse candy display.  She simply responded that she was going to look for her special treat and took off.

Knowing full-well that this is about to get ugly, I pay quickly at a nearby register and attempt to lure her out of the store with a snack at home.  No bueno.  The whining started, "I want a special treat!" (There are so many things wrong with that statement and how it was delivered; I can only guess that people were shaking their heads at me, but I can't say for sure, because I avoided eye contact at all costs.)  There would be no talking her down from the ledge.  So, I pick her up (with Hannah still affixed to my front) and explain to her that it's time to go to the car.

This is when the screaming and arm/leg flailing began, "I WANT A SPECIAL TREAT!!!" I got out of Office Max as fast as I possibly could carrying two children.

The screams subsided not long after I got her restrained in her carseat.  But then, every couple of minutes she persisted with, "Mommy, I want a special treat."  Each time I said evenly (though I was screaming in my head), "No special treats, Emmy, you were naughty in the store."  And she started wailing all over again as if it was the first time I'd turned her pleas down.  The closer we inched towards home, she used an alternate approach; through her tears she said, "Mama, I happy now, special treat?"  Of course none of my responses were what she was hoping for.  Praise the Lord for Dora, who bought me 28 precious minutes of quiet to collect myself.

Lucky for all of us, Daddy called a short time later.  Both girls were engaged in some dress up play when the phone rang.  They looked a little like this:

Emmy was excited to talk to Daddy on the phone, and was giving him a play-by-play with what she was doing as they talked on the phone, "I spinning, Daddy!"

Her deranged ballerina appearence matched her earlier attitude.

Just as I laid the girls in their beds, a pretty decent thunderstorm rolled in, which, understandably, made it hard to sleep (the colds and teething didn't help either.)  So, Hannah got some tylenol and Emmy and I made a fort.  This is how I found her later...

I then got to work cleaning up the house and unpacking some more boxes before Hannah's tylenol wore off.  But it was quiet, which is all I could hope for.