for a french fry? really?!

Mondays are the roughest day of the week for me.  I have a mentor meeting after school on Mondays and head straight to the babysitter's house to quickly shuffle Julianna off to gymnastics.  She's there an hour which is not quite long enough to go home and come back and it's not really convenient to anything besides Wal-Mart and Chick-fil-a.  I've tried hanging out there while we wait but it is such a headache with a toddler who wants to run around and head out on the floor with the big kids so usually I kill time at Wal-Mart.  I actually have premature anxiety about how I'm going to stay sane when I have two kids to shuttle around to after school activities, but that's a story for another post.

Anyway, today was a beautiful day and my meeting was canceled so we grabbed Happy Meals and headed to a park on the way to gymnastics.  It was pretty crowded there and the kids weren't too interested in eating when there was a playground right in front of them so after a while I gave up the battle and just let them go play for a few minutes before we had to leave. 

As it turned out, I walked around the whole time carrying Happy Meal boxes and milk cartons and chasing Josh from apparatus to apparatus while shrugging off kid after kid who asked me for the Happy Meals.  So eventually the worst of the worst happened and Josh fell off the top of the playground equipment while I was right next to him.  I'm not even kidding.  I was Right There. 

[tears just thinking about how quickly my heart sprang way up my chest]

Fortunately it wasn't too high - probably only a tad higher than my waist - so he wasn't hurt too badly (and the squishy park flooring helps).  Nevertheless, it really scared him and he screamed and screamed.  I dove down to scoop him up and did a quick once over to see if there were any obvious and serious injuries and beforehand I threw the food and my cell phone down on the ground. 

Out of thin air this kid comes running at me.  He was probably three or four years old and he was one of the ones that had kept bothering me trying to stick his hands down in the Happy Meal boxes.  So he runs over and says, "Awww, is he OK?" as he sticks his grubby, mud-covered hand down into one of the Happy Meals, grabs a handful of fries and a chicken nugget and runs off.  I looked over and saw his mom watching the entire thing.

I was like, seriously, Dude. If I'd known you were that hungry I would have just given them to you in the first place.