Calling All Cars

So yesterday began in the wee hours with El getting up early to get into bed with us suffering from his cold. He kept tossing and turning and hawking the snot and whatnot out of his congested head.

We rushed to the earlier "family" service at church. El had packed a backpack with toys that were not all that quiet. After trying to get him to quiet down, he said "no" loudly and stuck out his tongue at A when she took him out of the service. She also had to pry his fingers off the pew to get him out.

After several conversations and a make up session with A, I took him to coffee to talk about better behavior and acting like the big boy that he is. (Who am I kidding?)

So we walked to the bookstore in the mall to look at some books and meet up with A. El sees this toy that he really wants (didn't know that the kid's section even had toys) so I told him that we aren't going to buy anything today but that he could put the toy on his list. He proceeded as he wound himself up to drop to the floor and scream for it. This was so out of character for him that I almost started laughing. When he wouldn't get up, I took him by his hand and walked him out of the store. By this time A had joined us, she heard him screaming of course, and took his other hand helping with the escort. When we enter the mall, El started to scream, "Stop let go of me. You're hurting me" over and over. At one point we looked at each other in a half-smile as if to say, surely those blood curdling screams are not eminating from my sweet angel. Several people watched us as we excorted the unrully client outside the building to the car. One mother turned with a "hmm-hmmm-hmmm, I've been there honey (and glad it's you and not me at this moment)."

We load him in the car. He proceeds to throw toys at our heads from the back seat. I start the car and look in the rearview mirror to find a man talking into a cell-phone craning his neck as if to read the license plate of our vehicle. "Oh good grief, I bet that man on his cell is calling the police." And within two minutes our section of the parking lot is swarming with mall security. One is doing a driveby, two are looking on from opposite sides of the sidewalk.

I couldn't believe our luck. At this moment we are being watched by the same enlightened perverts who obnoxiously surrounded A around while she took a break in the mall and nursed El when he was an infant. But A true to her genius in parenting, closed her door and walked up to the nearest security guard and said, "OK, I have a sick 5 year old in the car, who is sleepshort and threw a fit in the mall after not getting a toy he wanted. You wanna come and talk with him?" "Sure," he said.

So the officer walked over and talked with Beelzebub. El was quiet and kept looking to us to figure out why this policeman (I wasn't going to try and explain to him that it wasn't really a cop just security) was talking to him about his horrible, terrible, bad day.

As we left the parking lot, A said, "I will be making the appointment for the vasectomy on Monday."

Then we came home to voicemail from sister-in-law saying that she had a dream that we had a baby. "And it was really cute."