Operation Buy Jelly

Its 4:45 and I have just gotten home from work. Sehla is upset because she wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but she has no jelly. Lora tells me that one of us contaminated her jelly. It turns out that Sehla has a gluten problem or something and can't even have one bread crumb. Apparently, someone used their jelly and double dipped the knife back into the jelly after applying it to bread....Sehla asks me to take her to get jelly...and of course I say ok.

I run upstairs to put a shirt on and when I get back down, there is a grocery list of 20 items on it. Lora asked me to pick up these things for her too. What was I going to say? The little girl was all excited to spend time with me. Lora then informs me she has no money and she'll have to pay me back later on. Dooooped again...

I put Sehla's car seat in my back seat. She gets in and her mom watches from the door as we drive off. "Be safe" she shouts...as if I'm not always safe.

We get to wegmans 2 minutes later. Sehla grabs my hand as we walk into the store. I wonder if anyone thinks she's my kid. We hit our first snag on this mission...we walk by one of those machines where you use a crane to get a stuffed animal. Sehla begs me to play. I tell her we can do it on the way out and this seems to appease her.

5 seconds later she's gone! Like a bolt of lightening, she takes off from me and starts running towards the back of the store screaming and laughing. "Chase me...Chase me...Chase me" I hear the same words that I heard 2 hrs a day while at home. I manage to get her to settle down and we start looking for Lora's food items. Nothing on the list is something that I have purchased before. It took me almost 1 full hour to find the items. I did learn one big lesson though: avoid walking past bulk candy bins with a kid.

The first time we walked by the candy, Sehla took a peppermint and ate it. I told her that was bad and I wondered if anyone would say anything to me. She laughed like the little devil she is. She then ran back to the candy bins and grabbed a handful. She was definitely noticed this time. I walked to her to get it from her but she ran from me. She ran to the opposite side of the bins and screamed. I walked to that side and she ran back to the other side. "Chase me...Chase me..." Six people stood and watched the cycle of me going to one side and her running to the next. I pretended to just walk away and then she ran to me. I figured that would work. I did get the candy from her which made her upset. I made a deal with her to buy it for her if she would stop running from me. She was good to go after that....until...

I thought we were going to have a smooth trip out of there. I forgot about the machien with the robot arm to get prizes. Sehla ran to it. A blind monkey with no arms would have had a better chance to win a prize. I put 3 dollars into that game for her. 90% of the attemps she pressed the button without moving the arm. In retrospect, I should have just told her she was playing and i'm sure she would have bought it.

We head home and I think to myself that i'm glad that is over. Lora was unhappy though: I only got 1 container of soy milk and the list said to get 4. I also got a jelly that was sugar free, but had nutrisweet. Apparently if you give that to someone who has anxiety issues, it could cause a panic attack. She thought that I should have known that...I told her I wouldn't mind seeing her lose it. She said i was mean. What can i say? I am!