A Morning O'Fun

Just in case my 6 blog readers haven't gotten tired of posts about Jackson and his larger-than-life antics, here is another one.

Yesterday morning I was racking my brain as to what I could do to get Jackson out of the house that didn't involve me spending large quantities of money as a by-product. I had tried clothes shopping with Jackson and although sheer willpower and desperation on my part made it possible, the thought of another morning spent with Jackson crawling under dressing room doors wasn't ringing any bells for me.

[Did I ever mention how strange it is that I actually look skinnier in Ross dressing room mirrors than in Nordstrom dressing room mirrors? Maybe it's the fact that there isn't the strategically placed extra mirror to show your backside or maybe it's because I can justify buying more than one thing at Ross. Or maybe all the skinny, fashionably dressed salesladies at Nordstrom just make you feel bigger. You would think that a store like Nordstrom that gets so much right with customer service could invent mirrors that make you feel smaller. But I digress...]

Only moments later I got a call from a friend inviting me to go to preschool playtime at the indoor field house. Brilliant! For only $2 I got two hours of Jackson running around on a large, fully enclosed field. This was perfect. At 10:00 am I packed snacks, piled the kiddos into the car and was off for a fully fantastic morning involving room for Jackson to run, other moms to talk to and getting out of the house. Except Jackson was involved so things couldn't go exactly according to plan.

As I drove in the direction of the field house, Jackson was happy and  excited, but only until we turned off onto a street that wasn't in the direction of Ranell's house. Then he started screaming, "Yell's house! Yell's house!" I tried to explain that we were going somewhere fun and we were going to play with friends and toys, but he wasn't buying it. It was all-out tantrum time. When we got to the field house I finally got Jackson out of the car and in the door of the place. Then it finally clicked with him that we weren't going to another clothes store. And so we relaxed and settled in for our morning o'fun. Until Jackson decided he was hungry.

It was still a little early for lunch when we left at 10:00, but I did have the foresight to pack some snacks. Unfortunately Jackson, being the efficiency buff that he is, didn't see the need to stop playing and exit the field to eat the raisins he found in the diaper bag. But the rules said "No food on the field," so I took him out to eat his raisins. Which was fine for a minute or two. But, apparently Jackson thought it was obvious to any thinking human (even a two-year-old) that there was no reason to stop everything to eat raisins when you could just as easily eat raisins while you were climbing the slide and hucking toys at other children. But he couldn't find any way to get this self-evident fact across to his dense, efficiency-challenged mother. And so a tantrum ensued.

After much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally managed to convey the fact that though efficiency-challenged I might be, Jackson was NOT going to get the raisins at the same time that he was on the field and he went back to running and playing on the field in our morning o'fun. But apparently, having an entire soccer field with toys to play on was not enough for Jackson. He figured out how to unlatch the enclosure to the field and spent the rest of the time we were there outside the field, crawling up and down the benches and trying to sneak his way behind the receptionist's desk.

Alas, our morning o'fun soon came to an end and we were back at home, engaged in our normal occupations --Jackson: poking Addy in the eyes; Me: dropping whatever I had started to rescue her from her brother's "love". (I would be curious to find the ratio in my life of items started vs. items finished.... but I digress.)