Buyer Beware...

This post is not going to be funny, and is not fun for me to write, but I feel the need to use myself as an example for all you mothers out there.

Last night I went shopping with my kids. I left the store at 8:00pm and walked to the car with the two kids and several packages. As I was digging for my keys in the dark parking lot, a young man walked by us and made eye contact with me, but kept walking. I got an uneasy feeling, but chose to ignore it. The kids were whining because it was so chilly outside, so I put them in the car, started it, and turned the heat on. Then I decided to take the cart back up to the store. I didn't think this was a big deal since I was parked in the very closest parking spot to the store. I had Owen sit in the front seat and told him to lock the doors and not unlock them until I got back.

As I walked back up to the store, I saw the same guy sitting on the wall in front of the store. As soon as I reached the door to put the cart inside, he stood up and put his hood over his head and started for my car. I turned to follow him, thinking he couldn't possibly REALLY be headed for my car, but playing it "safe" either way. When I realized he was indeed going straight for my car, I sped up and started yelling at him. He walked right up to the driver's door (where my son's face was on the other side of the window) and pulled on the handle a couple of times. When he realized it was locked, he just walked off in the other direction like it was no big deal. This whole time, I was screaming at him (while dialing 911) and said "What the hell are you doing?! Were you just going to drive off with my kids in the car?!" to which he replied "My bad" and then flipped me off.

That's right. He said "My bad" about attempted car theft and kidnapping. I am so angry. There are people out there who treat these serious crimes as no big deal, and they are just waiting for someone like me to be careless. I am sharing this experience because I know there are so many moms out there who do the same thing I did (in one form or another). I, for one, will never again feel guilty about leaving my shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot. Do not leave your kids unattended for even a second. Who knows what could have happened? Maybe he just wanted something as simple as my purse, but the ideas of what could have happened....what I could have lost...are tearing me up. I can't stop thinking about it, and I have a feeling I will be shaken up for a while.

I was able to give an extremely accurate description, since I had been so close to him and walked by him twice, but the police never found him. The kids are fine. Owen was definitely scared last night and kept saying "That guy was trying to take us," but I think he has pretty much forgotten about it this morning. Thankfully, I think Hazel was pretty oblivious the whole time.

I told Owen how proud I was of him for obeying and keeping the door locked and that I was so glad he was safe. Maybe, if nothing else, this will be an experience that will teach me and my kids about the dangers that are out there, and they will heed my warnings a little more carefully.

Night Running...

...deserves a quiet night. I love R.E.M. I need to put some on my ipod so I can sing that while I run.

So- running at night is my new obsession. I LOVE it. You would think it would be more motivating to be at the gym and have people around me (you know...I would run longer because people were watching me!), but I have discovered that I can go forever at night. It's dark, and quiet and cool. Just me and my music. Oh my gosh. It feels so great. And then I sleep SO much better after a run and a hot shower. Heaven. Maybe if I can keep it up, I will actually start losing some of that weight that is making me so depressed!

As for other random ramblings, I took the kids to McDonald's tonight so that I wouldn't have to cook for or entertain them. It was quite nice. They filled up on nuggets and fries and apple dippers and then played on the slides for an hour while I read a book. Hazel said "This is my best life ever."

Mine too, dear....mine too.

And when she plays with her harmonica, she calls it her Lukeledian.

Musical in the making...

Hazel loves to sing. She sings about everything she does all day long....as if her life is just one big musical. I love it. Here she is playing with her princesses and creating her own little princess musical. I was trying to hide around the corner, so I didn't get much of it.

Half-n-half

Just in case everyone read that wrong, she does NOT sleep in our bed. She has her own little bed in the corner of our room that she quietly sneaks into in the middle of the night. Much less disturbing than the old routine of carrying her back to bed over and over in the middle of the night while she screams and cries and hits me. I am hoping to somehow correlate new bedtime rules with the 4th birthday. I need an elaborate plan.....

On another note. Hazel has started doing something lately that cracks me up. She discovered these little white rocks that can write and I told her they are called chalk rocks. She looked at it for a while and thought about that and then said with excitement, "Half chalk, half rock!"

Now everything that has two words (or two syllables for that matter) becomes one of Hazel's famous half-n-halfs.

(library) "Half lie, half berry!"

(doritos) "Half duh, half ritos!"

(building) "Half bill, half ding!"

Some of them turn out pretty hilarious, but I can't think of any of the funny ones right now.

Sleeping booty

Hazel has sleeping issues. She has for about a year now. In fact, per our pediatrician's instructions, she now sleeps in our room every night. She has her own little bed (the "nest") in our room. However, I insist that she falls asleep in her own room in her own bed. I am hoping that if I can at least enforce that rule, she will eventually grow out of it.

Anyway- it is a HUGE struggle to get her to sleep each night. Owen lays his head on his pillow and is asleep about a minute later. Hazel, on the other hand, takes a good hour. Usually this hour is filled with yelling and repeatedly getting out of bed and crying and asking for a million different things. I have learned that if I let her take a toy or a book to bed with her, she is more likely to stay in bed. She still takes about an hour to fall asleep, but at least she is staying in her stinking bed, right?! So- the other night, I walked in to check on her....make sure she was finally asleep....and this is how I found her.

I scooped them all out so she wouldn't roll on top of them, and she had at least 30 toys in there with her (some buried like a pirate's treasure under the pillows). Whatever makes her go to sleep.

A Day at the Zoo

Isn't that a creative title for this post? The kids and I went to the zoo today (thanks to the free passes from Owen's piano teacher). I just decided we would stay there until they couldn't handle it anymore and do everything the zoo had to offer! The website says it should take 2-3 hrs. to see everything at the zoo. We stayed for five and loved every minute of it! I didn't bring a camera, but my cell phone took some suprisingly decent shots of the day!

We bought a carousel pass (because I know that's what they love best), ensuring us 3 rides each on the carousel. So- we started our excursion with two of those rides.

Carousels have always confused me. Why is it that there is such happy music playing and general merriment all around, yet the animals all have these vicious, ready-to-pounce-at-any-moment looks on their faces? Don't get it. Maybe everyone is just so darn happy that the animals aren't real.

Right next to the carousel is the stingray exhibit. We splurged and paid to pet the stingrays and sharks. SO cool. Owen had to really warm up to the idea, but once he touched one, he was hooked (as long as there was not a shark in sight...he took his hand out every time he saw a shark nearby). I finally convinced Hazel to touch a stingray, but she would only do it once. I guess she just wanted to be able to say she had done it.

Then we walked by the little "stadium" right as a show was about to start, so we stopped to watch "The Land of Ooz." That's zoo spelled backwards. Slightly more creative than my post title. It was cute. We saw lots of fun animals right up next to us, and Hazel got REALLY into it (I think she thought the wicked witch of the southwest was real....she can't stop talking about it).

In my opinion, the porcupine was the star of the show.

So- by now I'm pretty sure more than and hour had passed and we finally made our way to the animal exhibits (with fresh kettle corn in hand). We saw every. single. animal. And I do mean every single one. But I'm pretty sure this one was my favorite.

Seriously- he was so cute and fat. We were feeding him popcorn and he ate a couple of pieces very slowly (it appeared as though he had quite enough to eat for the day). Then the birds caught on and started swarming down on the popcorn. So our little friend started taking the popcorn from us (I swear he would have eaten out of my hand if Hazel hadn't been squealing) and running them one piece at a time to his special rock and burying them. All around the rock. He picked a new spot for each piece. I couldn't get enough of watching him furiously trying to hide all the popcorn from the birds so he could enjoy it in peace later. So cute.

Here are the rest of the random shots of the day.

Eating ginormous snow cones.

"Monkeying" around outside the baboon exhibit.

Flamingos! Why does everyone (including me) get so excited about the flamingos?

Vicious gorilla we found hiding in the bushes...holding a spork.

Crossing the bridge to the petting zoo (because who doesn't love goats?).

Like manna from heaven.

Contemplative.

Owen fell and dropped his snow cone (I felt SO bad for him), but luckily his precious little sister loves to share!

Owen jumping the "creek"

I told Nathan it was the best time I have had with my kids in a long time. I'm sure a lot of their fantastic behavior had to do with the fact that I spoiled them like crazy and let them do everything they wanted on their own little time schedules. And it was so worth it. We were happy and laughing and had five whole hours of fun together. I cherish moments like this, and even though they called me mean an hour after it all ended, I know times like these are helping them make great memories, too!

Nutella

I don't want to compete with Dannii, who REALLY likes to blog about Nutella, but I just have to post this. I finished off a jar of Nutella tonight (my ONLY reason for talking myself into going to the grocery store), and threw it in the garbage. Now- the Nutella jar does not go in the garbage until I have licked it clean.

Apparently Hazel did not approve of the "clean-licking" I had done, because 30 minutes later I caught her licking Nutella off her fingers and face. That's right- she had sniffed it out and removed it from the garbage to finish off what I left. I've created a monster!