When Will I Ever Learn?

This afternoon, a simple trip to Costco turned into quite a long ordeal simple because I can't seem to learn from my own mistakes.

Let me begin by quickly telling you that a few weeks ago, while helping Mitchell on his bike, I had Ben push Jack in the stroller so I could focus a bit more on Mitchell.  Jack started to get fussy and bored, so I gave him my garage door opener to play with, which did the trick!  Everything went smoothly until I got back to my garage and could not find the opener anywhere.  After retracing my steps not once, not twice, but THREE times and still no luck, I ended up having to hop a fence and open it from the inside.  So I have already lost a garage door opener because I gave it to Jack to keep "safe" for me.  Lesson learned, right?  Apparently not.

Jack was already fussy when I put him in the giant-sized cart at Costco, so what did I do?  I gave him his favorite toy: my car keys.  My thinking was that he is right there in front of me and keys are noisy.  If I don't see him drop them, certainly I will hear him!  Well, drop them he did and I didn't realize this until we were all the way out at the car, ready to load up.  I searched for them for a moment before it hit me that I had done it again: I had given something important to Jack and he had not taken care of it like the responsible and mature 8-month-old he is!  

I told Ben that the keys were lost (no, not a very positive way to tell a 5-year-old) and he panicked.  He got quite scared and started crying.  He thought we were stuck at Costco forever.  "This is terrible, mom!  What are we going to do!  We'll never leave now!  Those keys are lost forever!"  He wasn't whining or complaining, he just really was concerned about this!  I assured him that the keys had to be in the store somewhere still and if he could calm down and help me, we'd find them quickly.

Well, we did not find them quickly.  We walked all over Costco, searching for keys and trying to keep our tired baby from having a melt-down.  After a while, we gave up looking and went back up front to see if anyone had turned them in yet.  While I was there, I met another crazed mom with two little girls who was waiting for the very same thing - lost keys to turn up!  At one point during my cruising around, searching for the keys, I bumped into yet another mom who was looking everywhere for her Costco card!  Apparently, I am not the only mom with only half a brain when it comes to keeping a baby quiet and happy in the store.  

The keys turned up and this search only added an extra hour to our Costco run.  Ben breathed a sigh of relief that he would not have to actually live at Costco, Mitchell had a great time during that extra hour climbing around on the cart and eating extra snacks, and Jack tired himself out with plenty of crying and squirming and making mommy sweat.  

Have I learned my lesson this time or will I give Jack more important tools as "toys" in the future?  Only time will tell I suppose.