Life on the Run

I did the unthinkable today and left the house a little before noon without feeding my children.  Of course, as soon as I got on the highway, my oldest informed me that he was thirsty.  I told him that it was too bad that he didn't tell me 5 minutes sooner.  But then I felt bad and took him to Starbucks.  I typically order a boxed juice or chocolate milk for my little guys when we go to Starbucks.  But today, I got this genius idea that we could have Starbucks to-go.

I decided that it would make sense to order chocolate milk in a frappuccino cup with a lid and straw for the 2 year old as opposed to boxed milk.  Then I ordered a vanilla bean blended frappuccino without coffee for my baby because I figured a frozen drink would be less messy than milk. Yeah right!  This was not a genius mommy move.

It never occurred to me that a vanilla bean blended frappuccino would come with a whole mess of whipped cream.  And who would have thought that chocolate milk from Starbucks is yucky?  Let's just say that the 2 year old cried all the way to Dallas (a good 45 minute commute) because he didn't like his milk.  And the 13 month old figured out how to use his straw as a spoon so that he could eat whipped cream.  And that's when I realized that the boys were still hungry because I had only dealt with the "thirsty" issue.  It was about that time that I realized that I should have just sucked it up and gone to McDonald's--which happened to be right next to Starbucks.

After running my errand for the day, of course I couldn't find a fast food place to stop for lunch.  So I ended up getting a kid's meal to-go from a sit down restaurant so that my boys could at least share quesadillas and fries before we headed home. 

I know, parenting magazines would accuse me of being the root cause of childhood obesity in America.  Heaven forbid she give her children Starbucks and french fries!  But you know, my children are happy.  They're healthy.  And we make it work.  That said, next time I think we'll venture out AFTER lunch or maybe I'll make peanut butter and jelly to take with us.  (Or have the healthy food regulators banned that too?)  Regardless, the moral to the story is that life on the run is always unpredictable and next time, Mommy will be ready.