Lesson Learned...

Today - hubs and I attempted to go to Barnes and Noble in downtown SLO to use a gift card we've had hanging around. It was an impromtu trip thus we had no stroller or backpack for the boy. We had faith...we shrugged and told each other "He'll be fine".
We walked out of there empty handed and frazzled and vowing to never leave home without a stroller ever again.
Our shopping trip went like this:

Enter store carrying child
Cruise around for a few minutes looking at the tables full of books
Child starts to squirm and flail around like his butt's on fire
Child gets granted permission to "run around"...and apparantly takes it literally
Hubs runs around store chasing the little man getting many "awwwws" from customers
Child proceeds to wreak havoc and pulls many books from the shelves
Hubs pick up books and I look up to see the back end of the child disappearing around the corner of the shelf...
I hastily run around the corner only to find many many many many other aisles of shelves the child has quickly disappeared into
Hubs goes in one direction
I go in the other
Hear giggling and books dropping on the floor
Find child...pick up books...
and for some (WTF WERE WE THINKING) reason decide it would be "fun and distracting" to ride the escalator upstairs
Hubs heads to the history section leaving me to hope the kids section will be fun and interesting enough
I quickly learn that the kids section is worse because all the books are lower and smaller and there's more of them
Child is squealing and running faster then I think possible through the kids section
We round a corner and find two parents with children sitting quietly in their laps reading books together
Right then is when my child finds the stuffed animals and proceeds to pull them ALL off the shelf and toss them onto the floor...
Then squeal at the top of his lungs and tear down another aisle.
I quickly pick up the stuffed animals and cram them back on the shelf ignoring the laughter from the parentals
Only to run around the corner and find my kid in the coffee shop with a ceramic mug in his hand
(why oh why would they put the kids section right next to the breakables section???)
I run over and snatch it from him and tell him NO
Child laughs and runs over to a table of people shouting 'HI!!!!" at the top of his lungs
and then turns around and tears back into the kids section finding more stuffed animals neatly placed underneath a display table....and then not-so-neatly undisplays them while I sigh and hang my head in defeat
Some poor employee there is gonna have to redo all those lovely displays
At this point, hubs finds us...we give each other the "abandon ship" nod...scoop up the child...and bail outta there.

The boy is BUSY :)