My little kleptomaniac

Monday was my first brave trip to the city alone with 3 kids. Ok, I wasn't completely alone...we met up with a friend there, but we managed the subway (and more importantly, the subway STAIRS) all by ourselves. Luckily, Jackson and Sydney were very well behaved and Kate slept most of the time. There were a couple of harried moments...this picture, for instance. We stopped in at Dylan's Candy Bar for a treat for the kids. At one moment I was breastfeeding Kate, Sydney was crawling on a table removing big lollipops from a glass vase full of gumballs, which she also ate, and Jackson was balancing on a peppermint bar stool, having a cotton candy bag fight with his friend James (with Cotton candy we HADN'T purchased). Gladly, they had the music up loud and my rants and raves couldn't be heard by all the folks there trying to enjoy their fun afternoon. Of course, a moment later, Milkshake came over the speaker and all the kids were dancing...shaking their cute little bums for all the world to see. We were laughing so hard...as were all the on-lookers.

We stopped in at Gap to do some "wish shopping" that is, where you walk around the store with all the things you'd love to buy, then come to your senses, realizing you have no money, and put everything back. What I didn't realize is that Sydney was doing a little wishing of her own and about an hour after leaving the store and a couple miles later, she proudly showed me her new tiger...which we HADN'T purchased! I could've died. I'm sorry to report we didn't run right back because it would've taken at least an hour to walk back there, then back to the subway, etc. so I have vowed to pay the $5 the next time we pass a Gap store. She's done this once before with a toothbrush at Target. When I went to the customer service desk a couple weeks later telling them I wanted to pay for the toothbrush you would've thought I had a third eye or something. They were so shocked that I made the effort to pay the $2.5o for the toothbrush that would probably never be missed.