At the mall again...

No I do not go to the mall all the time but today I went on another journey to find the elusive 00 size jeans. Really the 11yr old wears a size 12 in girls but she is too cool to shop in the girls section. She wants to be in the teen section. My sweet husband joined us on the hunting trip. Bless him. We realized we had both forgot our cell phones again and I reminded him we better not loose each other like last time. So we embarrassed the 11yr old by holding hands in the mall. She complained “ Yesterday was valentines day why do you have to hold hands today Gross!” We parked the car and the adventure began. I no sooner got out of the car when I noticed a small child probably 4yrs old running through the cars. I saw no adult near and the little boy was headed for the traffic. My heart went into mommy panic mode. Not wanting to chase the child right into the traffic I used my mommy voice and commanded him to stop now. The boy stopped just for a moment long enough to realize he didn’t know me and turned to head into traffic again. So then my husband commanded the boy to stop. He again stopped and at that point we could see a man coming toward us about 2 rows over and appeared know this child. What a relief. It was hard for me to move on to jean shopping.
Once in the mall we started our search. After 3 stores we found an acceptably cool store that actually had size 12 girls jeans that fit perfectly. Success. Yea. We headed for the far end of the mall to buy socks at Sears. Near sears is the kiddy play area where parents can sit on a bench and let their small children climb and jump on soft renditions of fruit or something like that. We approached the escalator to go up. I could not even believe my eyes. At the bottom of the escalator toddles a 2yr old, again no adult in sight watching out for this little guy. I said to myself not again. I got on the escalator and sure enough the little guy got on about 4 steps behind me. Then he sat down. Oh my goodness again I went into panic mode afraid he would get his clothes or fingers caught as he arrived at the top. Where was this kid’s parent!!!!!!! Well I cannot throw stones I have lost each one of my 4 children at some time in their lives. So I coaxed the little one to stand up and took him by the hand and directly back down the escalator hoping some panicked parent would come running to retrieve this lost child. Again no parent, I guided him to the icecream stand and asked the girl at the register to call security. With that the little boy pulled his hand away and ran. I thought maybe he saw someone he recognized. I followed to be sure he found his family. I stood watching this child for at least 10 min hoping an adult would start yelling hey my kid is gone. No such luck. I started talking to another bystander confiding what had just happened and how upsetting this was. He asked a man sitting nearby is this your boy. The man said yes. He did not speak English. I asked the man to explain to the boys dad that his child had been all the way up the escalator and he was lucky someone returned him safely. The man seemed very uninterested and I left feeling like I never want to go to the mall again.