Day 4: Baby needs a new pair of shoes

The other day as Anna got ready for school, I thought to myself, "I'll bet those flip flops break any day now." And that afternoon, they did. So today we went to Target to buy her some new ones. She quickly found several she liked and did eenie-meenie to make her final selection.

I told Toby he could also buy a new pair, and after browsing a bit, and getting distracted by some Angry Birds slippers, he decided he didn't care for any of the flip flops there and would wait to buy some another time. I was quite impressed with his self control, even though I saw some nice Shaun White flip flops that I had been steering him toward.

I then extracted promises from both children that they would not get the gimmes or ask to buy anything else, and after receiving this pledge, I let them browse the toy aisles while I looked at a few other things. I came back to find Toby staring at something, obviously with terrible inner conflict trying to ward off the gimmes. It was too much for him, having seen this same desirable toy in a catalog and now having the real thing within his reach, and we ended our store experience with a terrible stand-off, outrageous demands, and embarrassing behavior. And Toby didn't handle it very well, either.

We made up later, and built Legos together. We all just do our best.