Nothing Classier

First things first:  look who's smiling!!  Nicholas has been smiling for awhile now, as well as cooing.  He also follows our voices by turning his head.  All three of us love to make him smile and "talk".  Sometimes he even smiles while he is nursing, which just kills me!  : ) No wonder I haven't let Josh introduce the bottle yet.  I'm still not ready to share that time.

 Today I decided to begin the arduous process of Christmas shopping.  Yuck! Jos A Banks is supposedly having this fantastic "corporate" sale, or something.  Josh is in need of some new clothes for work, so he sent me a half an hour away from home with his wish list.  I loaded up the boys for a "quick" shopping trip.  Ha!  There is nothing "quick" about taking two kids out for Christmas shopping, or any kind of shopping, for that matter.  While I was happy to get some of the shopping out of the way, I really wanted to spend my time at Michael's, the craft store. 

We maxed out at Jos. A Banks, and lost a lot of steam after shopping for Josh.  Nicholas was a dream, and Michael enjoyed pulling sweaters off of the neatly folded stacks.  He also enjoyed playing pretend games, while slamming the racks of pants together.  It was such a fun trip!  Who knows what I bought.  I certainly wasn't paying attention to the "sale" prices because my eyes popped out of my head when the clerk finished ringing up the new clothes. 

Being the stubborn individual that I am, I decided that the boys could totally handle Michael's.  Nicholas seemed so content, you know?  Well.  We arrive at Michael's and our son, Michael, was a complete dream.  And, his brother?  He screamed the whole time!  Lovely.  I had to pee as soon as we got to the store, so I rushed the three of us to the back of the store.  Nicholas didn't calm down the whole time we were in the restroom because it was feeding time.  Of course! We left Michael's directly after the restroom break.

 I hatched up this plan to feed him quickly at Borders while Michael checked out the books.  What a sweet idea, right?  We made it down to borders and Nicholas was WAILING at this point, with his "MAAA" cry.  Naturally, I unstrapped him from the Bjorn as fast as I could.  I sat down in the middle of the kid's section and nursed him without a blanket.  Eventually Michael took off his coat, which I used to cover us as much as I could.  It was hysterical, though.  We were quite a sight to behold.  Michael was yanking one Thomas book off the shelf after the other, and Nicholas was not content with his stressed out mother.  When he wasn't nursing, he was screaming.  I'm pretty sure that the customers could see my belly lopping over my too tight jeans, which is so classy!  The postpartum belly is not fun!  The kid's section cleared quickly, except for a Grandmother who was shopping for a three year old boy.  When she asked for help, I tried to stand up to offer assistance and in a bossy tone told me, "just sit down and finish what you're doing." 

The funny part of this story is that I STILL wanted to go to Michael's after this whole episode!  We didn't, though. Nicholas fell asleep after nursing (and screaming), which meant that it was Michael's turn to throw a temper tantrum.  He couldn't possibly understand why I refused to purchase twenty Thomas the Tank Engine books!  At this point, I knew that Michael's was out and nap time was in.  

Oh well.  We probably won't get around to decorating this evening anyway!  Thank goodness we're home now.  I hope the boys nap for a long, long time this afternoon.