fair trade

There's no place like the Minnesota state fair, where you can drop almost 30 bucks just to walk through the gates. It's the only place where you can smell manure and funnel cakes simultaneously and you still want to start planning next year's trip to the fair. The only place were you feel like good parents for forcing your children to 'stop asking when you are going home and start acting like you are having fun!'

I have a feeling like my kids are onto my gig though, that they know the only reason I'm going to the state fair is for the foot long corndogs and not for them... you know, for them to have a good time... for them to experience the essential all-things-Minnesotan state fair...

For some reason (my husband and I must have been hungry when we planned this), we were at the fair by 9am in the morning.

The kids were asking when they 'were going home?' by 10:20.

Somewhere around 1pm, after my corndog, but before my Sweet Martha's cookies and free refill milk stop, my kids started to break down.

We brought 2 strollers exactly for this situation. Only my (very) tall 7 year old decided he couldn't walk anymore, so my husband was pushing him in the stroller with people giving him a shameful shrug, like we were terrible parents that have lazy kids that can't even walk... the only thing that would have topped off the looks of disgust would have been him sucking on a Nuk (what, you don't give people the evil eye when their much-too-old kids have Nuks in their mouths? Never mind then) Wyatt, my 4 year old, refused anything that had to do with a stroller. Edy, well, she was just sucking on her bottom lip dealing with it as best as she could.

So, we head towards the gates, hoping to just swing by for milk and cookies on the way out.

I keep chanting to them about how awesome warm cookies and farm fresh milk will be.

I was pretty certain I had sold all of them too.

I stood in the line, my 3 dollars in my fist, just counting the heads in front of me get fewer and fewer.

Finally, I ran back to the family with our three cups of milk.

Only Edith decides this. is. it.

She lets out a shriek like she is dying.

She throws back her body and starts flying her arms in every direction.

I try to give her some of the chocolate milk but she keeps dipping her hands into the milk cup, sucking her hands, only to start screaming even louder.

I keep telling her 'no' and pulling the cup of milk away.

People start staring at us, whispering 'why aren't they just giving the baby her milk?'

Only then did I figured it out... Edy thinks it's a cup of ice cream.

The kind that she likes to eat when it's been a hot, long day outside.

I start desperately looking around for a straw to show her it's yummy, chocolate milk.

It's a worthless fight though,

straws are apparently forbidden in nearly every damn place in the world now.

I resort to scooping her screaming body over my shoulder and just walking away.

Without my free, farm fresh milk, refills

and without my warm Sweet Martha cookies.

I assume Edy think this was a fair trade, 'no ice cream for me... no cookies for Mom.'

*

Yep, the fair is so worth it.