When Will I Learn…

that taking the boys with me to the city for appointments that have nothing to do with them is a bad bad idea.

Here’s the thing.  When I’m at work, I take a certain pride in the fact that I rarely make the same mistake more than twice.  I will make many (different) mistakes, but I am sufficiently mortified when a file ends up back on my desk with a note saying “you missed this” or “you forgot to do such & such” that I rarely make the same exact mistake twice.  Barely ever three times.

So why can I not learn with this?

Today, I had a hair appointment to get a trim and an eyebrow wax.  The only time I could get in was 12:45, which is about the time that Berry Baby is usually napping, but I thought hey, he can make it.  I also thought that shopping for two hours before that would not be a problem.  It wasn’t.  The haircut was.

The first 5 minutes were totally fine as the boys dug through the toy box and discovered all the toys.  And it went straight downhill from there.  And by straight downhill, I mean plummeting.

Berry Baby was racing back and forth between me and the hair washing sink and the front desk.  Berry Boy thought that was funny and joined him.  Berry Boy got a stern reprimand and warning, but then sulked because Berry Baby was still running and he wasn’t allowed.

Neither boy wanted to play with the actual toys, and there were moments when one or both of them were sprawled on the floor in the main aisle, laughing hysterically.

Needless to say, I skipped the wax and went straight to the haircut, skipped the styling and got my hairdresser (who, fortunately, is also a friend) to simply blow-dry it.  Halfway through the cut, Berry Boy was sat firmly on a chair with a terse warning to stay on it as if his life depended on it, and Berry Baby was locked squirming on my lap.

Good times.

I escaped the city with my sanity in shreds, and when we got home I ended up hiding in the basement trying to see how many spoonfuls of Ben&Jerry’s I could shovel into my mouth before my absence was detected and the boys started hunting for me.

Apparently, five.