The Chocolate Tower

I felt stuffed.



Clearly, I shouldn’t have gone for all those desserts.



But they all looked so good! Golden Corral has fabulous desserts.



And the chocolate tower....



“Mommy? Can I get this? I love him.” Natalie reached over and plucked a stuffed lion from the shelf at Wal-Mart. She hugged it to her chest. It was the fifth toy she had picked up, hugged, and proclaimed that she loved it.



“No more toys,” I reminded her. After all, her room is filled with toys. Where will anything go when it’s Christmas? It’s hard to make her get rid of things. Because naturally she’ll hug all of THOSE toys and go, “I love this! I can’t say goodbye!” I remind her that there are kids who have nothing and don’t we want to give those kids toys? And then she nods and hands me a block. “For the kids,” she’ll say generously.



Man, I really need to take her to a homeless shelter or something. So she can appreciate everything she has. So she’ll understand that a block isn’t going to cut it.



“Say goodbye to the lion,” I told Natalie, taking it from her arms.



“Goodbye lion,” she said dramatically. She even gave a sigh. Then her eyes brightened when she saw a baby Rapunzel doll from the movie Tangled. “Mommy!” she yelped. “Can I get this? I LOVE her!”



Ugh. Bringing her into the toy section is a bad idea. But if I don’t, then the entire time we’re at the store she’s like, “Toys? Toys? Are we looking at the toys? I’d really like to look at the toys. When will we see the toys?”



It’s why I like to shop when she’s in school.



But I was at Wal-Mart with Tom—it still feels odd to write it—Tom, my husband, who was in Korea for a year—and we wanted to look at the grills.

But before we could look at grills, we had to look at toys.



“Mommy! Look! It’s Snow White! Can I get her? I LOVE her!” Natalie breathed. She even pressed a palm over her mouth as though seeing a plastic version of Snow White was the best thing she’d ever seen in her life.



Eventually, we were able to get away from the toys and went to the section where the grills were. Tom prefers charcoal grills, as do I. He was flipping through the instructions on the display because some grills want you to put together EVERYTHING. And while Tom is a wonderful handyman, even he has his limits. (But seriously, screwing together one handle bar is a bit much…)



After the grills (we didn’t buy one yet) we went to check out—but we had to stop because Natalie saw a display of Angry Birds toys and got excited.



“Bad birds! I want to hug a Bad bird!” Natalie yelped.



Yes. Even though we’ve told her over and over that it’s Angry birds, she insists on calling them Bad birds.



After all the (bad) birds were hugged, we were able to leave.



And I still felt huge.



But…



Tell me, could you turn this down?