Saturday, September 16, 2006

Daddy Goes to Work and Mommy Goes to Ikea!


The title is an actual quote from Marah when she was about two years old. But it has been awhile since we have made the trek to Ikea and since my pantry is in desperate need of new shelves I decided to go today and scope out the options. I told Marah, Ethan and Abby that I needed to check out some shelves and it might be a little bit boring but if they could be on their best behavior we would eat lunch there and play in the kids section for awhile. I also said they could MAYBE get something. Everything went pretty well at first. We entered the Ikea Universe and strolled through the maze admiring all the comfy couches, bookshelves, pulling and shutting all the drawers (Abby especially liked that part) and I looked at the storage shelves that I was interested in. Marah and Ethan and Abby all chose to get stuffed animal bats as their treat (Ikea has weird stuffed animals...) Then we decided it was time for lunch. We stood in line, bought our plates of meatballs, potatoes, gravy and lingonberry sauce, paid, sat and ate. All was well. I checked my phone and saw that I had missed a call from Mike, so I called him back and he was almost there to pick us up. I suggested he park and come meet us in the cafeteria and he could have something to eat. It was then that I made the MISTAKE. I thought to myself, I'll just go order Mike's plate now and it will be ready and waiting for him when he gets here. The table was in eyesight of the food line so I left Abby happily eating and told Marah and Ethan to sit there and play with their bats. I ordered a big plate of meatballs because Mike had said he was starving and Marah had said she wanted more too. As I was paying I glanced over to make sure Abby was still ok and she was standing in the high chair. So I quickly ran over to her, picked her up and went back to pay. I then carried Abby and the tray of food back to the table. If you weren't horrified that Abby stood up in her high chair unattended you may be wondering where is the mistake? Well, as I sat the tray on the table it was overlapping the edge a bit and in one graceful move my purse slipped off my shoulder landed on the tray and catapulted Ikea meat balls, gravy, potatoes and lingon berries all over ME! After a long deep breath I cleaned it all up and I was very proud of myself that I did not cry. I even went and got another plate of meatballs. I think the serving people behind the counter thought I was eating an awful lot of meatballs!
We did finally escape the Ikea Universe and I really think there is a time warp when you go from our universe to Ikea and back because my watch said we had been there for 5 hours....I think I'm going batty!

3 comments:

Erin said...

Wow, Ash! I'm so glad you survived Ikea! It's a different trip these days from when you used to go with baby Mara, huh? That's a cute pic of the kids. Did you find any shelving you like?

kathryn said...

it's probably a good thing that there isn't an ikea anywhere near where i live, or my kid's would be saying, "daddy goes to work BECAUSE mommy goes to ikea!"

Mary Ann said...

Oh Ashley! We went to IKEA yesterday here in Berlin and thought of you in the restaurant and when we passed the cute bats. We didn't spill meatballs, but our stroller broke on the way there, and we found out they didn't take credit cards, so we used all our cash and then had to carry Sebastian and two huge bags of stuff home on the train. It was all worth it to have some ice cubes and dish towels, though!