Shopping.

So we've been MIA this weekend, but school is getting ready to start, and when it hit me that we hadn't even thought about school shopping, it became clear that I might actually have to leave the house, which I've barely done since July. Ava has outgrown every uniform she has and I had no idea what size she was, and then one day I looked down at my children's shoes and realized their toes were literally hanging over the edges and neither one of them had one single pair of shoes to fit them, which meant we had to head to the mall. And Target, of course. Oh, Target. I had been avoiding it like the plague what with the having no money thing. It is ridiculous how happy walking into that place makes me.

So then, suddenly, the entire weekend was over. I swear, five minutes ago it was Saturday morning and we were gearing up to head out to the van to head to Target and the mall, and...now it's Monday. Seriously. I may have blocked out the horror of the past few days, hours of meandering into just one more store to see if they had the elusive uniform shorts that actually end above the knees. I can't find them anywhere, and I am so sick of shorts that are purporting to be Bermuda shorts but fall below her knees...those are capris. I don't want capris. Keeping the kids from hiding in the clothing racks then dragging all three of them into the dressing rooms was a lesson in endurance.

In every store, I had to stop Jace as he ran toward the uniform section, yelling "I need uniforms for my school!" and remind him that he is not going to kindergarten this fall, and that he doesn't need uniforms yet. He was very dubious of that fact, and wasn't exactly sold on the truth of it. When it was time for Ava to choose the color for the backpack she needs for school, I thought he was going to lose it. "I need a rolling back pack! I NEED one!" He insisted. I promised he would get one when he went to kindergarten, but he was unmoved.

This is where it gets hard when you have siblings so close in age. Do you get something for each of them no matter what? I used to think so, when I only had two kids. Now that I've had four, with three to raise and one more on the way, it is just not a viable option anymore. Sometimes one kid is going to get things the others don't, or vice versa. It's just how it is. If someone could come explain that to my kids, though, that would be awesome, because they are just not getting the concept when I explain it to them.

Thankfully, we survived. We have uniforms, we have a backpack and a lunchbox that thankfully have no Disney characters anywhere on them. We don't have shoes, because I refused to buy the Spiderman and Disney Princess varieties, but oh well...we live in Florida, they'll survive. Ava wore a pair of mismatched flip flops to a birthday party yesterday and she didn't mind...maybe she'll start a new trend.

It was nice to be distracted by mundane things this weekend. John in in Las Vegas at a trade show, and I feel a strange mixture of relief and guilt. Relief that I don't have to deal with the build up and let down of his visits, and guilt that I feel that way. Being around him right now is just mentally exhausting, never knowing when I'm going to say or do the wrong thing and end up on the receiving end of the how much I suck lecture. It's been nice to have a little reprieve to think and just hang out with the kids without having to plan his visits or leave to kill time while he sees them.

Ava and Jace are playing some weird game right now, and Jace just yelled "Don't Panic! Ok, Panic!!!" They're so silly.