I got a new phone on Friday. That was an experience. I went in, knew exactly what I wanted and got it. Only I had to hand over my old phone. Which, although it meant I lost random text messages from soccer parents whose numbers I never bothered to log, was ok by me. IF, and it was most certainly a big IF, they made sure to transfer all my pictures. See, last time they tried and didn't. Among many mess ups during that trip. They somehow managed to give the father figure's phone number to me and vice verse. As I was explaining my reservations the manager asked "Did you go to the store off of Cheklov?" Why yes I did. You know it would be nice if companies would hang signs outside their stores saying something along the lines of "This is where we send our incompetent employees" in the interests of full disclosure.

X-Man was over the entire process before it even began. Which was good. The tech guy said the longest part of the process would be transferring the pictures over. He asked how many I thought I had, probably a couple hundred? I simply said "I have a lot of pictures. And those are the only pictures of my newborn youngest daughter since the father figure lost his phone. So, yeah." The whole thing took two hours. Apparently, it takes a long time to transfer over 1300 pictures.

I wish I could have taken a page from X-Man. He was awake when we got out of the car, awake when we got to the store, yelled at me to turn his stroller around and then........I've never seen a child sleep the way X-Man does. He sleeps as if it was a full contact sport. Which is typically is for anyone near him He sweats like he's running a marathon, breathes like he's dying (which means back to the ENT doctor for us) and is quite dead to the world. I can't count how often I've transferred him to the basket of a shopping cart, pushed him through the parking lot, throughout the store and back out across the parking lot as he snores away. His snoring is rather incredible too. While it makes for easy shopping for me, except for requiring Baba to push a second cart because nothing fits in Sleeping Beauty's carriage, there's usually drama when it's time to load up the car. X-Man gets very frustrated because I have yet been able to transfer him BACK to his car seat asleep. So he groggily realizes he's in a parking lot but mom's putting him back in the car. No we need to go in the store! Mom you forgot to go shopping! Here I will yell very loudly to jar you back to reality!

X-Man's ability to pass out as soon as he sets his mind to it impressed the manager. X-Man had been loudly campaigning to be allowed to play with a sample phone. And then suddenly silence. I half assumed that he had gotten himself out of the stroller and snuck off. But no. The phone guy suddenly announced, "Oh that's awesome, I'm going to have to get a picture." Suddenly Mac alerted and went into older brother mode "Are you taking a picture of my brother? Is that your phone? Is that my mom's phone? Why are you taking a picture of my brother?" Satisfied when he learned that it was mommy's new phone being used, he drove right  back into Angry Birds.

As a result, our two hour foray into the phone store wasn't a complete disaster. The older  kids played games on the phones, X-Man slept and Cinco did Cincoy things.....like smile and smile and smile some more.