A Day In The Life Of A Mom And A Special Moment

A day in the life of a mom......well, just a small part of the day....like a few hours. :)

We were up at 7:30am, which really is a decent time. Brinley always crawls into bed with me, we snuggle and we wait for Adele to start tooting and calling for dada. I get out of bed, kiss Brinley, hand her the IPad, rub Adele's head, tell her that I love her and get in the shower.
Once I'm out, I give Adele a book and Brinley is usually singing the alphabet song and I keep getting ready. We have a routine and we stick to it.
Once I'm looking presentable, I get the girls dressed and ready for the day. We eat, we laugh, we hang out. It's our routine.

Today, we decided to go to Target and were hoping for some awesome deals. We got daddy to meet us there so he could help with crowd control. I was picking up some socks for World Down Syndrome Day. Last year, I went into the local elementary school to do a bunch of presentations on Down syndrome. I have a question and answer period at the end and hand out funky socks. The whole point is to teach children that we are all different, we are all unique and we all have our own strengths. The students are so responsive and respectful towards Adele. I love the innocence.

The Target visit went a little something like this.....
"Brinley, stop rolling around on the dirty floor."
"Brinley, where did you go?"
"Brinley, put that down."
"Brinley, I'm losing my patience."
"Brinley, do you have to pee?"
"Brinley, I'm going to leave you here, in Target and mommy is going to go for coffee somewhere, with your well behaved sister."
"Brinley...Brinley...Brinley....Brinley...."

Brinley now has pink cheeks from running through the entire sock section and from rolling around, kind of like how a sniper would manoeuver through the bushes, she was doing this around the racks. Although she had some stealthy moves, wrong place, wrong time."

I decide that I will ignore the situation. Pretend that I do not know this child.

We get to the till with around fifty pairs of funky socks. Brinley starts grabbing them, tossing them, yelling at her father, I am still pretending that I have no idea who this child is or who she belongs to. Not my problem.
James picks her up, she goes all limp, then stiffens her body and yells and kicks. James uses his quiet whispering tactics. I think he threatened her with no dinner or something.
We are at the self serve checkout, I am rhythmically scanning all of the socks, singing happy songs in my head. One pair won't scan. I want these socks. Brinley is yelling.
JUST SCAN! JUST SCAN!! After fifty attempts, it works.
"Brinley, put your coat on."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
It's not like it's really super cold out. She will survive. I'm sure other moms do this all of the time. Whatever.

By this point, James is excited to be heading back to work.

We get the girls in the car, I yell over Adele and give Brinley the mom eye and all is quiet.

Three hours before this, I drank my Isagenix shake. Three hours after the shake, I was  craving rum or McDonald's. I haven't had McDonald's in almost a year. I knew that I couldn't get hammered, so we called auntie and she met us at Wal-Mart.
Target, and now Wal Mart. I feel classy today.

We meet auntie and we head up to the till. I start feeling guilty. I feel my butt expanding and my tights getting tighter. I reconsider eating fried food. I am staring up at the menu board and think about a salad. I think about a smoothie. I think about how I will feel within fifteen minutes after eating McDonald's.

I push those thoughts out of my head and order Brinley a meal, momma a meal and auntie settled on poutine. We are going to sit down, eat a 'nice' meal together and not feel guilty.

We get settled and auntie's phone rings. It's the groomer. She was on her way to the vet because she cut off almost the entire bottom half of Bacchus' ear.

Auntie leaves so that she can meet the groomer at the vet. Mommy feeds the children.

I remember that Brinley hasn't gone to the bathroom in a couple of hours. I dread going into the Wal-Mart bathroom. I sit and wonder if I can avoid it. Does it really matter if she pees on the car seat? Yes, it matters.
I clean off our table and make our way to the bathroom. I tell Brinley that if she touches anything, she will never get a potty treat again. I whip out the potty seat, Brinley sits down and pees. We are good.
When I flush the toilet, Adele gets scared and starts crying. The cries are echoing and bouncing off the walls in the bathroom.
We exit and hand sanitize Brinley.....all the way up to her elbows.

She starts grabbing her pants, between her legs and tells me that she needs to go potty again. Are you kidding me?
We go back in, get out the potty seat, pull her pants down and she's wet.
A good mother would have taken off her panties and pants and put her in a new set. I am not that good mother. I put her back on the potty, she doesn't need to go.
I pull her pants back up and have enough common sense to not flush the toilet.

We go back out and sanitize again, all the way up to the elbows. 

I think when I get home, I should have a rum n coke.

I see an older lady staring at Adele. Not a happy stare. No smile, just staring.
In my head..."oh forget that lady, you are so not going to ruin my day. I dealt with somebody like you the other day and I just managed to pick myself back up. You will not stare at my daughter, you will not treat her like she is anything less than a perfect, little miracle."

Yes, all of this was  going on in my head.

After our incident on Monday, I didn't want to go anywhere on Tuesday. I didn't want to face anymore stares. I didn't want to face anymore ignorant people. I didn't want to have to deal with those who chose to walk up that morning and be an ass. It was a difficult day because I have never experienced these feelings before. I didn't want to take my child out in public. It was a sad day.

As I looked back at this woman, I thought, it's ok, you don't know us. You don't know my child. You don't know what you are missing. You don't know our story, our journey.

We headed out to the car and a man walked passed me, he was smiling, he was handsome, he had kind eyes. I was looking at him. I was smiling. He has Down syndrome.
His smile was so sincere and genuine. His presence was beautiful. He brought this sense of peace to me at that very moment. I needed to feel this. It was like he was looking at me and reassuring me that it will all be ok. It will all be ok.

Adele's Over the Rainbow Baskets - Down syndrome LOVIN