If the shoe fits, cheap fits, and two year old fits

I've spent the last 10 days trying to find my six year old a pair of soccer cleats that fit. Target, which has always come through in the past, seems to have stopped carrying cleats and all they had left was 5 or 6 pair in the clearance bin, all of which were black with pink stripes. Obviously, that would never do. So we tried baseball cleats. Size one was way too small, size two was way too big. I feel your pain, Goldilocks. So this morning I started calling around and found a place that had his size in stock and they agreed to hold them for me. So my two year old and I ventured out and 30 minutes later we had soccer cleats! They better fit.

Next stop, the Thrift Store. I needed to find some "throw away" clothes for my race on Monday. Buses transport us from downtown Boston to Hopkinton for the start of the race. We have to catch the bus at 6:00 a.m. but the race doesn't start until 10:00 a.m. So that leaves several hours of sitting around outside in the cold waiting for the race to start. Thus, the need for some cheap, warm clothes that I can discard at the starting line and not have to worry about ever again. (I also picked up a $3 inflatable pool raft for me to relax on at the Athlete's Village until it is time to move to the corrals, but I digress.) So I'm looking for sweat pants and a sweat shirt and apparently they sell everything except what I'm looking for at this particular store. Or maybe men just wear their sweats until they are full of holes and unsellable.

Meanwhile, my two year old is running all over the store, checking out every area except for the men's area. So I finally have to pick him up and carry him across the store so I can shop. He starts screaming but then he sees toys and everything is fine. So he starts playing with toys and I finally start looking for clothes. I'm keeping an eye on him and he is never out of my sight line. Nevertheless, all of a sudden there is an announcement over the P.A. system about not leaving children unattended. Now everyone is looking around trying to locate the "bad parent." Long story short, I can't find a single pair of sweats in the men's area so I look in the boys area and jackpot. A perfect fit for $1.00. So now I have pants but no shirt. I go back over to the men's area and somehow find a wind shirt from the Glass City Marathon, in my size. Again, $1.00. So for $2.65, including tax, I have my throw aways. Excellent.

The final task was to get my two year old away from the toys and to the front of the store so that we could check out. I'll call this task "Mission Impossible." He's playing with this little toy flashlight and I figure for 50 cents I can bribe him to the front of the store by asking him if he wants to take that toy home. Nope. He just wants to keep playing. After waiting...and waiting...and waiting, I finally had to pick him up and carry him to the front. He is screaming and crying the entire way. I set him down so that I can pay for the clothes and he bolts for the front door. I grab him and take him back to the register and now he is REALLY screaming. I somehow manage to complete my transaction and I carry him outside and to the car. Once I sit him down in his car seat he'll be fine, right? Right. He refuses to sit down, flops out of his seat and sits in a corner of the van crying his eyes out. I decide to let him get it all out. After a couple of minutes he lets me pick him up but he continues to cry for another minute or two while I walk him around the parking lot. Finally, I get him in his seat and pull out of the parking lot. Suddenly, he starts screaming again. He wants his shoes put back on. I pull over, put his shoes on and pull back out. He continues to cry the entire way home. I have never seen him like this. When we get home, he sits down in the garage and doesn't want to come in the house. He's pissed. So I leave the door open and after a minute he comes in, asks for a juice box and a bagel with cream cheese and he's back to being himself. Like nothing ever happened.

Note to self; Always, always, always keep snacks in the car.