Lila and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Yesterday was not Lila's day. 

It started out like every other day.  She woke up at 6:15 and began making indecipherable noises to wake up Ellie, who acts as her Get Up and Get Mom and Dad Out of Bed mule now that Ellie has achieved the pedal freedom that accompanies a big girl bed. 

Lila has found this to be a more effective strategy than trying to get us out of bed by yelling at us from her crib.  It's a lot easier to ignore something chattering in a crib than a toddler opening your eyelids, asking to watch Mega Mind for the millionth time. 

Anyhoo, Nick is still on paternity leave so we decided to join every other bleary-eyed, bed headed, half-dressed man, woman and child on baby leave in the metro area and go to Target at 8:30am.  I really think Target should take advantage of all these overwhelmed, half-awake time wasters and sponsor some sort of breast feeding support class in the diaper section.  Or, better yet, because most of us have already been awake for nine hours by 8:30am, a happy hour back in electronics.  Put a good movie on those big screens, bust out some wine and just let her ride. 

Shopping with three kids under 30 months requires special provisions, one of which is that we now need two carts.  Nick thought it would be more fun for the girls to sit in the back of the cart, vs. putting Lila in the front and using the seat belt.  You know, the seat belt designed to keep kids from falling out of the cart.

Mere minutes into our trip I looked over to see Lila hanging over the side of the cart, and before you can say "life in a wheel chair" she did a full frontal flip over the edge, landing smack on her back.  It was the most awful sound, sort of like a sack of potatoes hitting the ground if a sack of potatoes had lungs. 

For a moment she just laid there and looked like she might do a snow angel or two but I realized she was just trying to figure out why she was suddenly looking at the ceiling.  Of course the fun part came next, where she started screaming and then I count the seconds until security escorts me to the nearest prison.

Once we got home Nick decided to take them on a walk around the block, where Lila promptly tripped and fell on the sidewalk, bloodying her cheek and nose.  And while I was upset for her pain I was more upset about the Christmas pictures we were supposed to take that afternoon.  I put a lot of effort into those outfits! 

Well, okay, she's actually wearing Ellie's outfit from last year.  Oh, and I forgot to make sure the shoes fit (they didn't) so she doesn't have any shoes, but still. 

I mean, not that Christmas pictures EVER turn out to meet my expectations anyway.

Yes, Ellie is playing with firewood, Hadley is screaming her balls off, and Lila looks like she was involved in a knife fight.  

And then there was this whole mess.

Where I heartlessly, callously forced her into the arms of a 300 pound bearded stranger and told her to ask Santa to bring Mommy some whiskey.

However, in Lila's defense, Ellie wasn't thrilled with the whole Santa idea either.

This was taken three seconds before she started crying so hard she almost threw up.

Fa la la la la.