This past Tuesday I took a blissfully child-free trip to Target. I wandered the aisles. I browsed. I picked out all the best clearance Valentine’s Day candy without any grubby little fingers grabbing at it. I spent a good hour and a half filling my cart with the kind of useless, pretty things that make Target the Best Place To Shop Ever.

Half way through the cashier ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment and swore to the cashier four thousand times that I’m sure it was just in my car and I would be RIGHT BACK, OK? PLEASE DON’T PUT ALL MY STUFF AWAY.

So I went on a hunt for my wallet. It wasn’t in the car. It wasn’t at Guest Service. It wasn’t in the parking lot. I called home – E said it wasn’t on the counter. I drove back to the doctor’s office where I had been just before Target. The nice nurses looked everywhere but we couldn’t find it.

It’s a big wallet. It’s also bright red. It’s always been really hard to misplace and isn’t the sort of thing you drop without noticing. Now I was PANICKED. The stuff in there is IRREPLACEABLE. How am I going to find the time to get a new driver’s license with two kids to drag around? I can’t see a doctor without my military ID (it’s my insurance card) and I can’t get a NEW military ID unless I can get on base which I can’t do without a military ID. IT’S AN ENDLESS CIRCLE OF HORROR. Not to mention the credit cards, my social security card, my membership cards at the aquarium and seaport and the four hundred rewards cards to various stores. For some reason I was oddly worried about those. How will I ever replace my Gymboree Rewards card? MY LIFE IS OVER.

I drove all the way home on the brink of tears. Once I saw the empty counter and realized my wallet was good and really, truly missing I lost it. Sob sob sob. Hopeless despair. E finally realized I wasn’t going to just pull it together and got up to help me look. WHATEVER  HUSBAND. IT’S LOST. FOREVERRRRRRRR. There’s really no point in going to look in the car because…

Oh, hey. Lookit there. It was under the passenger seat. It must have fallen out of my bag and slid back to where I couldn’t see it while I was driving. Oopsies.

I drove back to Target and collected my cart o’stuff, most of which suddenly seemed stupid and silly and not worth buying but at this point I was too embarrassed to put anything back. In fact, I threw in a couple extra things from the check-out lane to, I don’t know, make up for being such a moron. Because somehow in my head three packs of gum and a chapstick is what it costs Target to leave my cart between two check-out counters for 45 minutes.

Yesterday I did all our meal planning and went to Stop & Shop to buy $200 worth of groceries. Half way through the checker ringing up my purchase, I realized my wallet wasn’t in my bag.

SHIT.

I panicked. I blushed and apologized and died of embarrassment. I told her to finish putting all my stuff in my reusable bags and I would be RIGHT BACK with my wallet, swearsies. No, really, I have money! I can afford these things! I am not some sort of crazy person who just likes putting things in a cart for the hell of it!

I checked the cart. I checked the parking lot. I drove home. I checked the driveway and the back porch and the counter. I started to freak out. AGAIN, UNIVERSE? REALLY?

I yelled at E “I lost my wallet AGAIN! I just left a whole cart of groceries with the cashier and she thinks I’m a crazy person. Can you believe it? TWICE in one week!”

E looked at me and said “Did you even check the car?”

Guess where my wallet was.

Breastfeeding baby #2 is a piece of cake compared to the first time around. (Mmmm…cake. I would like some cake. I would like a whole cake and no I don’t want to share because I am SOOOOO HOOONGRAAAY from the nursing.) All the stuff I struggled with during Little Evan’s early days made me an expert on boobs. A Boobspert, if you will. I figured out Caroline’s latch sooner, my engorgement went away sooner, I recognized the thrush and knew how to treat it sooner, we’ve  introduced a bottle sooner, I’m building up a nice little freezer stash of pumped milk sooner. It’s been almost 2 years since I first started nursing and I have FINALLY got the hang of it.

But in the process, I have confused the hell out of my toddler.

Hello, I'd like some more milk please.

Little Evan was exclusively breastfed until he was almost 13 months – and when I say “exclusively” I don’t mean that’s when we switched to milk, I mean that’s when he started eating ANY solids. The first time I ever saw him eat enough food to be considered a meal was his birthday cake. The child hated baby food, threw up Cheerios, screamed at sippy cups and lived entirely on boob power for more than a year.

I don't see what the problem here is, I know you've got milk in there. Do I need to say PLEEEEEEESE?

When I got pregnant the second time, my supply dropped dramatically and he weaned in a matter of weeks, just after he turned 15 months. We started with rice milk and eventually made the switch to organic whole milk. He LOVES his (fancy, expensive) milk and drinks it like it’s going out of style.

Fine, if you're going to be that way I'll just do it MYSELF

Now that he sees Caroline nursing all the time, he’s started to wonder why his milk comes from a cup instead of straight from me. I haven’t had to flat out refuse him yet, but he keeps patting my chest and saying “mama milk”.

Yes yes, put the milk in my belly! Wait, I don't think this is working.

I’m pretty sure he’s going to be OK in the long run, no permanent damage from his cold, withholding mother who won’t nurse him any more. Actually, one day he’s probably going to DIE OF SHAME that I talked about breastfeeding on the internet at all.

Sharing!

Sorry baby. Send me the therapy bill.

We are not a big sports family, so I have absolutely no explanation for why my 20 month old is IN LOVE with football. Besides dancing to the music in commercials, it’s pretty much the only thing that holds his attention on TV. I’m hoping this doesn’t mean he grows up to actually want to PLAY football though, since I don’t think I can handle watching him get trampled and the only other option seems to be Douchebag Quarterback. YEAH I’M LOOKING AT YOU TOM. CUT YOUR HAIR.

Evan’s a little hard to understand with the sippy cup in his mouth, but I assure you those words are “football” and “touchdown.”

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve already heard the 140 character version of this story and I apologize for making you hear it again.

Since the weather is still mild-ish and the toddler is still grumpy-ish, I dragged us out of the house for Stroller Strides this morning, even though I don’t usually make it on Mondays. But I have way too much to do today to deal with a napless child and Stroller Strides + playground = guaranteed afternoon nap >2 hours. BAM. Baby algebra for the win.

Unfortunately I forgot to factor in 8 months pregnant + bottle of water – bathroom facilities at the park, so by the time we made it home I was doing the don’t-pee-your-pants shuffle while dragging Little Evan, the diaper bag, the wet bag, jackets for both of us, a blanket, two sippy cups and a half-deflated football (because this: BUHBALL!! BUHBALL!! NOOOOO!!!! BUHBAAAAAAALL!! is what happened when he saw me trying to leave it in the car) into the house. I dumped everything – including the child – on the kitchen floor and sprinted to the bathroom just on the other side of the baby gate.

Less than 2 minutes later, I came back through the gate to find Evan standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding a weird yellowish rock in his hand, looking at it in a puzzled manner. I walked over to see what it was, thinking “Wow, it was so nice to pee without someone watching me for once. Maybe I’ll do that more often!” when I realized what exactly he was holding.

POOP.

A GIANT PIECE OF POOP.

I screamed so loud he dropped it (OMG) on the kitchen floor (OMFG) and stumbled backwards against the cabinets.

“POOP!” I shouted, as if this would somehow activate an emergency response team trained to handle just such a situation. “THAT’S POOP!!!”

It only took another second for me to realize I was alone in my kitchen staring at the horrible turd and no hazmat team was imminent. Also, the dog had jumped off the couch and was starting to sniff around and as bad as the current scenario was, if the dog…No. I’m sorry. I can’t even finish that thought.

About 400 baby wipes later, I had safely transferred the poop to the toilet, wiped up everyone’s hands and felt disinfected enough to drag us both to the sink for a thorough scrubbing followed by half a bottle of Lysol applied to the floor. Crisis averted, it occurred to me this was really more of a mystery than a horror movie. WHO did the poop belong to? WHERE did it come from? WHY was the baby holding it? WHEN did my life turn into this?

Ok, that last one isn’t such a mystery. But back to the weird parts. Little Evan was fully dressed – diaper, corduroy pants buttoned at the waist, socks, shoes, shirt, sweatshirt. He looked exactly the same as he did when I dumped him on the floor 2 minutes earlier. I did change his diaper after I stopped hyperventilating and it was dirty (TMI ALERT) with several smaller poops that seemed to belong to the same, uh, family. But HOW did he get the one giant one OUT?! Was it from an earlier diaper? How long had it been…loose?  Could it have been hanging around for………No, seriously, I can’t think about this anymore. I’m not strong enough.

My sister-in-law has a similar story about a mystery poop, found in the middle of the nursery one morning while a fully dressed toddler slept in his crib. Before kids, I thought she was probably exaggerating.

I KNOW BETTER NOW.