How Much Does a Dinosaur Cost?

I am a happy, semi-successful mother of twin boys. Every day is a struggle to balance total meltdowns with tent forts. They are my biggest joy and my biggest pain.

Today, I took my lovely sons to run errands with me. First mistake. Normally, I try to eliminate stress by going to complete my everyday tasks while they are in daycare. Not today though... not today.

Our first point of interest: Petsupermarket. Sounds harmless enough, right? They have animals in there all the time so I’m sure they have all sorts of accidents and things being pulled off the shelves by sneaky pups when their owner isn’t looking. I usually feel quite comfortable in a pet store with or without my kids for that reason—whatever my kids or dog does, there’s been worse.

So we head inside, already a freaking mess. The dog doesn’t want to get out of the car and the kids have wrapped their seatbelts around their legs. How? No clue. I attempt to beeline to the dog washing station, which is really, really nice filled with nice functioning adults with nice dogs, wearing nice clothes, having a nice day.

Immediately, my son climbs the steps into the dog washing basin and sprays himself top to bottom with the hose. I’m already embarrassed, but I am going to continue on and clean my puppy. I pull my son out of the bath and do the finger to the corner trick (your finger can’t leave this corner or no popsicles for the rest of the day). This works for most of me wrestling with my Great Dane puppy who, by the way, is over 30 pounds at just 12 weeks.

I look over to the son that has been quiet for too long and, sure enough, the imp is gone! I turn just in time to see him turn on a blow dryer that is IN HIS ACTUAL MOUTH. Swooping with all the grace of a bear, I turn off the blower, pick up the kid, and manage to keep my dog from jumping onto the bath ledge all at the same time. Don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m Supermom. That’s heavy sarcasm right there.

After some horrible threats to my son, including no apple juice for the rest of the day and that he can’t wear his Power Rangers jacket for the rest of the week (mind you, it’s nearly 90 degrees out), he decides to apologize and behave as I finish up the dog bath and blow dry.

We head through the checkout lane with little problem and then, I had the bright idea to go get our puppy’s nails ground at Petsmart. Why did I do this to myself? I should have known this would end up badly. At this point, it was 2 PM. My 4-year-olds had not had a nap. I am the worst.

We head over to Petsmart, leaving a trail of cries because I refuse to buy them another dinosaur toy. We make our way into Petsmart and both boys immediately stop in front of the reptile section wanting to hold the iguanas because they are dinosaurs. I could smell a tantrum coming so I say, “We can’t get one of these today. Dinosaurs are expensive.” I’ve got a nervous puppy pulling on the leash and so I squash the crying and say that we are on a mission. Continuing on, we make it to the grooming parlor where I check in my pup.

In the 5 minutes that it took for the absolutely amazing employee to grind her nails, my kids went through every emotion possible. Just as the kids are about to start doing a push-up contest (where do they get these things?), we see Demi walking over to us and I breathed out a sigh of relief.

As we were walking up to the counter, I remembered that we needed a dog collar. We made a short pit stop where the kids decided that none of the collars were good enough LOL!

Lastly, we took Demi to get her vaccinations at Tractor Supply where my kids decided to build a ramp out of bits and bobs then send their toys down it. FUN! Whatever, it kept them occupied. Our dog was such a champ and got through her vaccines beautifully.

Then, we hit the checkout line... Dear god, the checkout line. Why would you EVER put dinosaur models in the checkout lane?! I feel personally targeted by this occurrence! My boys swarmed the setup, screaming each dinosaur’s species, pronouncing it perfectly, and then begging me to spend 20 whole dollars for each toy.

I’m not proud of it, but I lost it. I would have bought the plastic figurines just to make their day if they hadn’t been so hideously overpriced! They were beautifully crafted. Someone put forth a lot of effort to make these dinos lifelike. Way too loud, and way too angrily, I told them, “Put back the toys! You are driving me nuts!”

I will never forget the looks in their eyes. The utter betrayal because dinosaurs are our thing. We love learning about them together. Then one said something, “Mommy is right. We need to save for a real dinosaur.” Those kids put the toys back on the shelf, got in line, and did not say a peep until we got out in the car to go home where we watched a dinosaur movie marathon for 3 hours.

Take away of the story: Don’t take young kids to run errands with you. And I think I’m going to have to buy an iguana at some point.