I doubt she's ever going to want kids

I have a sweet, hilarious God-send of a girl staying with me right now.

She's an old family friend and flew out from Alabama with my Grammie this week. Hannah Beth is staying here with me for ten days while my Grammie stays with my parents.

We've had a crazy-fun time the past few days doing a lot of laughing, swimming at my parents' house, eating ice cream, laughing, watching TLC, staying up too late, cracking up, discussing the finer points of all things from clothing to convictions, and spending much time... laughing.

Notice a pattern here? I thought so.

I'm telling you, this girl is fuh-uh-NY, peeps.

For instance.

Last night, while we were all swimming by the light of the porch/pool light/moon, she asked, "People can't get sunburned at night, right?"

She was serious.

She's never going to live that one down. And she's okay with it. She's taken it and run with it.

Soon you'll being seeing her product when she patents her own moon-screen. I'll be first in line.

So anyway, today we decided to go shopping.

(Hannah Beth's daddy laughed at us tonight over the phone and told her, "You sure are suffering out there in California, taking care of those kids, aren't you?" She IS helping though. Believe me. She is. She waits on me hand and foot--she just got up to fill my drink while I remained seated on the couch. SPOILED--and is absolutely awesome with the kids. She is working hard. And without her, I wouldn't be doing the stuff I'm able to do WITH her.)

But we went shopping today. And we took my brother with us, since he seemed to get a double portion of the fashion sense I was born completely without. I figured with both of them, I couldn't go wrong.

(And I was feeling rested and peppy thanks to the boys' good night of sleep last night. I wish I could blame it all on one of your awesome suggestions, but last night was just a result of the swimming. Next week, peeps, I'm going to start in on those suggestions. Let me just say you all are AWESOME. You are wonderful. You know how to come to a girl's rescue when she's in a jam. I couldn't do it without you, peeps.)

So we started driving.

We got halfway into our two hour drive and stopped at a stop light. We were talking and laughing, as we tend to do and the kids were asleep when... we all screamed. (Except Zach, of course. He's a seventeen year old guy. They don't scream. They yell.) We'd been rear-ended.

It turned out we were okay and the truck was okay, though I still got the other guy's info, just in case. But he was wearing a really cool plaid hat, so we all thought he was purty cool. Makes it all okay, right?

After my fragile nerves calmed a bit, we went on our way to the mall.

We pulled in and parked, laughing and talking, once again, as we are prone to do.

We got out the stroller, the diaper bag, the purses, and all the other paraphernalia necessary to shop with two children, and the sweet, hilarious, helpful 16 year old girl pulled Merritt out of his carseat and set him in his seat. And then she felt that her hand was wet.

Need I even tell you what was on her lily white hand?

Poop.

I scooped him up and tossed her the wipes. Then she looked down into the stroller.

GOBS of it, peeps.

My brother walked over and checked out the carseat.

MORE GOBS.

I needn't tell you what the diaper itself looked like when I cleaned up the baby.

It took us a bit, but eventually we got cleaned up. Hannah Beth used about half a bottle of her Purell in the process and we only had three wipes left by the end of it, but, hey, we were clean, we were done, and we were on our way.

We took two steps toward the door to the mall and heard, "Eh. EWWWW!"

The poor girl had looked down at her shirt and saw ONE MORE GLOB. On her shirt.

Okay, I'm the mom and even I was disgusted. It looked.... yummy. We won't tell you exactly WHAT it looked like so you can enjoy your tortilla chips and, ahem, dip next time you have Mexican food.

Thankfully, I had a shirt she could put on and then, THEN, we were on our way.

I'm sure she was recalling such things as the other poop incedents she's read about here and making a firm committment against ever having a child of her own.

Both of them commented on the fact that I was pretty calm and collected throughout the whole ordeal--a fact for which they were both thankful. But what mom hasn't dealt with blowout diapers in public before? It comes with the territory. Kinda like being up all night. What they DIDN'T know and I did was that the poop incident was only the beginning.

Neither of them had really been power shopping with a two year old and a baby before. Ha.

But, hey, all in all, we were hugely successful in our power shopping attempts. We found a whole ton o' sales and a whole ton o' cute clothes in them. Zach--ever the trooper--even dared send two girls into the fitting room with armloads of clothes and waited patiently while we cracked ourselves up trying them all on and modeled them for him, expecting an opinion more than merely a "Uh, sure, looks good."

I felt like I was sixteen for a while. Except for, you know, the two kids whining in the background.

But, hey, a few bags full of new clothes and some new shoes make everything better in my book.