Sorry for Mooning You

If you were driving in front of Fred Meyer this afternoon, I was the woman dragging a pant-less, diapered toddler across the parking lot at ten below. Thank you for hitting your brakes.

I want the chance to explain. I’m not making excuses, but getting two small kids from the car to the grocery store at minus ten is a challenge. I can’t leave the car seat in the car because the baby will freeze. I can’t plop Cedar into one of the carts scattered around the parking lot because her ass will freeze. It would be too difficult to carry them both without taking all three of us down on the ice. When it’s this cold, Cedar has to hold my hand and walk into the store on her own.

I unhooked her, told her to “un-tuck” her arms from her belts, and ran around the other side to haul out Coral’s car seat. When I came back, toting a yowling basket of Coral, Cedar was sitting still. She interpreted “un-tuck” to mean pull your arms completely into the body of your coat and squeeze your eyes shut.

I told her I needed her to be a big girl and walk into the grocery store with me. I took her hand, said, “Come on, use your running feet,” and started pulling her toward the door.

As we hurried through the foggy exhaust of everyone’s parked-but-running cars, I could hear her muttering, but her hood muffled it. In the middle of the street I made it out. She was shouting, “My pants are falling down.” We were only ten feet from the curb, so I pressed on.

But the pants went south. Cedar tripped. Flat out on the ice in the street, her bare legs looked like the king crab at the fish counter. I scooped her up, staggered out of the path of an SUV, and tried to shake her back down into her pants.

Home again, when I unbuckled her in the driveway, she said, “Mama, I can’t walk to the porch. My pants will fall down.” We need to buy a belt.

tags technorati : fairbanks alaska motherhood winter