what normal must be like

The other day I found out we had an almost $300 credit with one of our utilities. A credit! "Thaaat's weird!" I said to the woman on the other end of the phone. She even double checked- it was true. I hung up with her, turned around to Noah in the back seat and yelled "That's weird!" at him. "GOOD weird! That NEVER happens to me! And that makes it even weirder!!" He just stared at me.

Today, I took my children out for errands. Which I rarely do. With both of them. To more than a quick trip to the post office and/or spree around Target. Most of the time I go when Lily is at school so it's just me and Noah.. and I am not outnumbered.

But.. too many things to do were piling up- like returns at the mall. The dreaded mall. (I said that out loud and had a great conversation with Lily about what dreaded means.) So.. off to the mall we all went. To go to three different stores.

I was preparing for it to be really, really horrible. I thought there would be running, yelling, crying, serious non-listening, etc. And.. there actually wasn't. The first store was.. fine. The second store was fine.. I even bought a couple of things for Noah. The third store was.. almost fine. The music was a little loud and Noah wasn't happy, but he chewed on my jacket for awhile and calmed down.

Honestly, I was scared. And suspicious. So naturally we then went to Target. Where I bought a lot of things. We were in the store for awhile. We walked and walked around the whole thing. Even into the Easter section. And my children were.. I don't know, what I assume normal children are like. Noah rode in the cart and Lily walked along with me. Like.. near me. By me. I didn't have to have a death grip on her for fear she'd take off at any second. She didn't even say one word about the toy section that I purposely and fully avoided.

It was like the twilight zone. So much so that at one point I just had to ask Lily if they were plotting against me. Her response? Possibly. I burst out laughing and thanked her for her honesty.

Still, I've been doing this too long to have pushed my luck any further.. we went home after that.