Why I hate the mall

When I last visited the OB she suggested that I wear a support belt for my aching belly, due to the stretching round ligaments. The place to get these is apparently any maternity store, and those are (nearly) all in malls. So today I bundled Arabella into the car and we drove ("why is it taking so long?") to the mall. I got my belly support belt, and signed A up for some mall kid club ($5, and today we got free mini take-home-and-bake pizza, cookie, 2 videos, a kiddie baking kit, and a $5 off coupon for Build a Bear, seemed like a reasonable deal). And as we were heading out, A spotted the requisite mall playground, and insisted we stop awhile.

There were only about 5 other children there, and Arabella was one of the youngest. They were rambunctious kids, but happy and having a good time. Araeblla's favorite thing, besides running in circles and being a big goober, was sitting on the weird cow (jumping over an even weirder moon, it's flat on the ground). She really liked climbing up so she was sitting on the cows head. And while she is hoisting herself up onto the cows head for the bazillionth time, the little boy who was the contemporary sitter on the cow shoved her off. This was not an 'oops' moment, he pried her off the cows head with both hands and shoved her to the padded and carpeted floor, a drop of about 3 feet. Arabella cried, and I reminded her to tell him "don't push me, that's not nice", while I scanned the parents present for the mother of this miscreant, who seemed totally oblivious. The kid was most certainly younger than A (probably in the 2 1/2 - 3 yo range, and as such probably had no idea that he was hurting her), but I would guess he outweighed her by at least 5 pounds. I wanted to tell A not to play with the littel jerk, but my kid is smart, and I saw her go around him several times rather than play in his vicinity.

Not 3 minutes later, a kid older and bigger than Arabella shoved the little miscreant of the cow episode down the 2 foot long slide (Up the stairs, down the slide not being in his understanding). He was not hurt, but the startlement made him cry, and the mother (I had been right about which mother) leaped to her feet and chewed out the kid who pushed her darling little hellion.

I decided it was time to go. Before I started telling this woman what a crappy parent she is, and what an ass her child is going to grow up to be.