Never Leave Home

As a stay at home mom, I really struggle with cabin fever sometimes. Its a lose/lose with four little ones, because staying cooped up at home with them all week makes you crazy, but trying to take them all anywhere might send you to the nut house. So I generally try and only go out alone with them maybe once or twice a week. However, lately I'm beginning to wonder if we should EVER leave the house. The past few times I've taken them to kids cove have been horrible... they have been whiney, grouchy, and super clingy. they literally sit there and hang on my legs pretty much the entire time. I have no idea what that's all about, but the worst is when I attempt to take them to the grocery store, and today was no exception. I had the whole morning planned out. I had fed them their snacks, they were in great moods, and I was so sure it would be a decent trip out. We had 4 stores to go to if it worked out, but we only made it to one...Walmart. I pulled into the parking lot and had our usual pep-talk. "Stay  by the cart, don't touch anything unless I tell you to, and LISTEN. If not, you WILL be getting spanked." This was of course followed by, "OK MOMMY!!!" So off we go into the store, and for the first 5 minutes, they did everything I told them to, even had their hands on the cart. I thought, "yay! this is going to be ok!" Then all of a sudden, Kyleigh was complaining about her shoe... and while im looking at something, she decides to take it off in the middle of the aisle...then yells that she cant get it back on. I sigh, put her shoe on and tie it, meanwhile D.J. is pulling the cart with Landon and Hayden away from me. I get up and go retrieve the cart ( with a screaming and highly annoyed Landon) walk 4 steps only to hear, "MOMMY!!! I really need to go to the bathroom, my tummy hurts! I've gotta poop!" Mind you, we were just at her Daddy's office for like 30 minutes, but no, she waits until I am alone at the grocery store with four kids. So we rush to the bathroom, and D.J. says he needs to go too. I stand outside the door with the babies while they go potty...tick tock tick tock... I hear about 6 flushes, then the hand dryer keeps turning on and off, on and off, on and off... so I open the door and D.J is standing there with his pants half way down his legs and says, "I need to wash my hands!" So i button his pants and let him wash... more time goes by...and after waiting about 15 minutes Kyleigh finally emerges and takes another 7 minutes to wash her hands and come out. Ok, so we are about 40 minutes into the shopping trip so far and I have a bottle of lysol in my cart... not doing so great. We are SLOWLY making our way down to the grocery part of the store and my kids are hanging on both sides of the cart, which is good in the sense they are staying with me, but bad because every person we encounter is ticked off that we are blocking the whole aisle. So I try to have them walk on the same side, which creates a huge argument over who gets to walk in front. we finally make it to the groceries and my kids are running around me in circles "play fighting", with lots of kicking, punching, giggling, and "hi-ya-ing". I keep telling them to calm down, but I'm speaking to deaf ears. Then its" mom can i have this?" "I want this" "Can we get candy" "Can i get a car?" And Landon leans back and decides to put his fingers in his sleeping sisters mouth, thus waking her up. Then I can't find the coffee Dave wanted so I make a call to him, During which i turn around to find Kyleigh pulling the shopping cart down the middle of the aisle, running into everyone along the way, and Landon is throwing things on the ground, both from my purse and the cart.  Rather than continue in extensive detail, the next 20 minutes consisted of lots of running down the aisles, screaming, kicking, laughing, knocking things over, taking things off the shelves, ripping bananas off their bundles, dipping their hands in the huge boxes of nuts and tossing them in the air like confetti, attempting to climb into the egg area ( i caught him just as his one leg was in there), laying and crawling along the floor, jumping off of benches, and climbing onto a worker's stool. As we are checking out, and I had finally had enough ( especially with the fierce "you are a sorry excuse for a mother" look in the cashier's eyes), I then quietly informed them both they were getting spanked when we got home. So what happens? The chaos turns to crying...no better yet, WAILING. The two big kids start wailing, Hayden was already crying, and just as the bag of lollipops gets put in the bag, Landon starts screaming. yep, I stood there, in front of a very busy Walmart with four embarrassingly loud crying children, my face was burning with humiliation, the people behind me were laughing and staring in awe, and the cashier couldn't even look at me when she handed me the receipt. I push my sobbing crew all the way out to the parking lot, (discovering along the way that at some point Hayden lost a sock), loaded them up, and counted the seconds until we were home. I may never leave my house alone again with my kids... That or I'm packing Ritalin.