The Misadventures of a Good Deed

My folly this time was giving my children what they want, an action almost guaranteed to backfire.

After picking Nicole up from school today, we went to the haircut store so Erika and I could get our hair cuts. When we were done, Nicole asked if we could go to Target. Having gone to the store yesterday, I didn't really need anything from Target and I told her so. She said that she would like to go to Target to get a cookie and look at the dishes (plastic dishes with Disney characters on them) and Barbies. I decided that since I didn't have anything that needed to be done, we could go. We got our cookies (Alex ate mine). We looked at the dishes. We looked at the Barbies. I let the girls walk up and down any toy aisle that they wanted to. I let Nicole look at the clothes. I let Erika look at the books. They picked out some princess bubble bath and I let them each pick out a box of special (character) Band-Aids.

After we had wandered around for about an hour and a half, and well past Alex's lunch time, I said it was time to go get some lunch. When we're at Target, lunch means getting a personal pizza from the eatery and letting the girls share it while I feed Alex some baby food. Announcing that it was time to leave sent Nicole into a fit of rage. She wanted to look at bicycles!!! I never let her look at what she wants to look at!!! The last remark was, unfortunately for her, the wrong thing to say after I had just spent an hour and a half looking at everything that she had wanted to look at. We immediately went to check out and, sadly, left behind the bubble bath and the special Band-Aids. Leaving behind our treasures and the loss of the pizza did, of course, start and equally impressive tantrum.

The lesson learned today is that it is true that no good deed goes unpunished!