Cute toy, huh? I mean, its just little plastic figurines. Its not anything I would pick out for Ella, but she loves it because its "Deeee!". Still, I bought it at the grocery store this morning, and you want to know why? It was either that or go to jail.

OK, maybe not jail. But maybe. This is the closest I've ever been to getting arrested (while sober and able to remember all the details). I don't know, I kind of just rolled with it when the security guy said I would have to buy it. OK, this is what happened. I spent too long doing my hair this morning and by the time I got out of the house, there wasn't enough time to go grocery shopping before I had to pick up Ella from daycare. So I went to daycare first and figured Ella would be Ok while I shopped. Well, she wasn't. Finally I let her out of the cart and she was walking along side me when she spotted a rack of Dora toys. We went over and prayed to the gods of FisherPrice for awhile, and then I tried to pull her towards the elevator. She grabbed one of these tubes which was on the lowest shelf and happily came along with me. I decided that she could hold it for awile if it made shopping easier and then I would trade her a babybel for the toys at the cash register and leave it at the shop. Easy peasy.

So we do our shopping and ella drops the tube of toys before we even get a shopping cart. I, quite stupidly considering that my attention span is not much greater than the baby's, stuck it in the basket under the pousette to put back later. Of course I forgot about it. By the time we finished our shopping, Ella had ripped open no less than 4 packets of food, I was irrate because the woman ahead of me at the check-out was Chatty Kathy and WOULD NOT SHUT UP about the damn bath mat that she bought (it was thoroughly examined by the cashier and two delivery boys, plus her daughter and the woman at the next register over and declared very nice by all. Thank god or I might still be there.) , and I was starving for my lunch since it was already 1 o'clock. We ran upstairs, I pushed the stroller through the doors and BEEP BEEP BEEP. I had set off the alarms. For about 2 seconds I had no idea why and then it dawned on me- the stupid Dora toys.

The security guard came over, and I was not too fussed. I said, "Sorry about that. I know exactly what it is. The baby wanted these toys and I didn't want to buy them so I put them here and forgot to put it back. " I handed them back and turned to leave and he said, No no no; wait right here. Thats when I realized that basically, I had tried to steal them, as far as they could tell. I wasn't just a harried mother, but a thief. I had visions of being dragged to the managers office, while they called the police! And childrens services! And, the worst, my husband who would probably just tell them to haul me away because I was an absolute disaster and couldn't even be counted on to check the address of the restaurant when we go out to dinner. Good riddance. So, when the other security guy came and said, no problem- babies do this all the time, I was happy, nay, thrilled to cough up 7 euros (Ok, thrilled is not quite the word perhaps) to be done with it all.

And once we got home, Ella chucked the tube under the table and hasn't even glanced it again.