Back in the Buggy

The combined effects of warmer weather, only having one vehicle, rising gas prices, and my ever-widening hips has forced me to get the kids into the double stroller a lot more the last few weeks. Jared and I have both been moaning and groaning about how "OUT OF SHAPE" we are. Of course he's still the same shape he ever was--thin as a rail-- and I'm roughly the same shape I've been--ripe pear--but, they're shapes that we're tiring of! We've tossed around the idea of joining the YMCA or some other health club, but when oh when are you supposed to do these things when you have two toddlers? It seems our choices are less family time or else go before the kids wake up or after they go to bed. There's NO WAY that I'm going to go before 6am and there's even less chance I'm going to go at 8:30 or 9pm. Alas, back to the stroller as transportation.

So, today I decided to walk to the hospital to get Ruby's blood drawn for her lead testing. I knew it was going to be difficult, especially now that Max is walking everywhere and a regular wild man, but really couldn't put it off any longer. Anyhoo, as you can see on my shnazzy map below, it wasn't a real intense hike--2 miles round trip with two "quick" stops. The first being at the hospital, the second at the grocery store to return a backlog of cans and bottles. I decided that the best bet would be to leave about Max's nap time at 8:30am. Then, he'd surely fall asleep and be quiet as can be at the hospital so that I could focus on Ruby. Well, turns out he didn't get the memo, so he was uber awake and we were all going to pay for it! As luck would have it (thank you, Murphy!), the wait was quite long. For a simple blood draw we were there for about at hour. During which time Ruby needed to use the bathroom three times in a very upsettingly stinky restroom and Max tried to run out of the hospital a good dozen times. He spent his spare time tripping people, flirting, and inhaling gummy snacks. Ruby played quietly most of the time only asking, "Can we pleeeeaaaase leave this area now!" about five times. The whole time all of the blue hairs were cooing at the kids commenting on how "cute" and "good" they were. I guess they didn't see how soaked with sweat I was under my jacket!


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Once in, Ruby did famously and miraculously I had one more packet of gummies from who knows when in the bag to appease him. I had promised Ruby a treat after her big event, so off we went to the market.
Once to Shaws we headed in to feed our sticky cans into the machine. While were back in the "can cubby" a friendly worker decided to totally trap us in with about 50 shopping carts. Nice. After I shimmied my hips on through and freed the stroller we went in search of sugary rewards under the $1.25 I had in "can cash". With a package of chocolate pudding cups in had we headed to the checkout. Surprise, surprise, surprise... The self check lanes are empty and large enough for us to pass through with the hulking double stroller, but they don't accept the "can cash". UGH! As my eyes scan for other options I quickly note that the only cashier manned lane is rather long and there's absolutely NO WAY the stroller will fit. After some mental gymnastics and stroller rodeo moves, we did manage to check out. This time, though, the blue hairs were commenting, "My you've got your hands full!" Apparently the rings of sweat were starting to show at this point!
Our walk home was lovely. Cool breeze, sun shining, and finally, Max was asleep.