A Bit of Avoidance Coping

I really want to blog about how we skipped Thanksgiving this year, but I only have a few spare minutes.  In fact, I probably shouldn't be blogging right now; I have a bajillion other things that need to be done.  But I don't want to do or deal with all of those other things, so I'm using blogging for a bit of avoidance coping therapy.  (Kudos to Susie for teaching me about that term. :)

This morning, exactly 8 minutes before the bus was to arrive, Josh realized he had lost his coat.  We looked high and low and and hither and yon - nowhere to be found.  I called Lance; he hadn't seen it.  We searched the car. Not there.  As I put Josh into a not-very-warm jacket, I figured that he must have left it at the resort right before we left.

Dang.

This made me doubly mad because this would be a doubly expensive mistake.  I had planned on Cole wearing that coat next year, and I wasn't willing to buy a coat the same size since Josh had already almost grown out of it.  (Meaning I'd have to buy a coat for Josh this year and a coat for Cole next year, when in a perfect world I should only have to buy Spencer a new coat each year and pass the rest on down.  Sigh.)

Then I got a FB message from my friend, Sara, who we had visited on the way home.  She had Josh's coat!  I was glad to know where it was and awesome Sara said she was willing to mail it out to us.  But that still left us with a rather cold Josh.  Since his coat was almost too small for him anyways I decided a trip to Target was in order.

Tess and Cole did not agree with this assessment.

Too bad.  I'm the boss, and so off to Target we went.

Of course there were no coats on sale (anywhere - I checked online), so I had to pay full price, which always kills me.  But I did find a super cute Christmas dress for Tess on sale, so silver lining.

But Tess and Cole were NAUGHTY.  Shoes flying, whining for snacks, rolling on the floor, running away, throwing items from the cart, throwing items into the cart, the full gambit of naughty behavior.

At one point I was turned away from the cart, only to suddenly see it whiz by with Cole in the basket yelling "AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE!" as Tess jumped up and down and happily clapped her hands, very pleased with herself.  (Target has new, very light plastic carts, which are easy enough for toddlers to push - or rocket - down the aisle.)  I caught him within a hair's breadth of smashing into a display of ceramic mugs.

Fast forward to home, where Tess decided to throw EVERYTHING off of her plate and did not like my reaction to this.  They finished eating before I did and decided to destroy the kitchen blinds, try to pull the (as yet undecorated) Christmas tree down, fight, and throw out several loads of clean laundry from the baskets they were in.

Santa is skipping our house this year.

But now my time is up.  It's time for Tess's nap and I have a paper I have to edit.  I still have approximately 38 loads of laundry to do, my Thanksgiving decorations are still up, I need to plan my weekly grocery shopping list, and I still haven't unpacked all of our suitcases.

That's the problem with avoidance coping - it works for a while, but it doesn't last forever.