Quick Trips and Hominy

You know it and I know it. Quick trips are a myth.

There’s no such thing as a jolly jaunt to the store anymore. Anything involving people under 4 ft in our house is going to take time. But, I try constantly to convince myself otherwise.

Today in fact, I bundled the kids up and scampered off to the store. I figured we’d breeze in and out like it was nothing. Big mistake.

Somehow we ended up at the market mid-afternoon on stock day. Great, I’m bobbing and weaving through boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling and bumping carts with stock boys and a hundred other customers who thought it would be the perfect time to get their groceries.

I have a list to keep us on task, but I also have two kids needing my attention. One is pulling jellybeans and Acai powder off the shelves and the other is complaining he’s hungry. Trying to reduce his intake of fiber and soy ink, I gently remove part of a magazine from his mouth when he begins crying, very loudly. So, I start hand feeding him cereal since I can’t find our snack cups, any of them. All this is going on while I’m balancing the world’s hottest cup of Chai, even with the insulator sleeve, my shopping list and a cart that only makes right turns. Why do I do this?

Over an hour into the expedition, we’re looking for beans. Turkey chili is on our menu this week and I need several kinds. So, we squeeze into an aisle with three other carts and a grocery guy bringing pallets full of stuff to be stocked.

We need more ingredients, but can’t move because the aisle is blocked both ways. I ask for help and get escorted to another aisle with the cart and the kids. We’re bobbing and weaving to keep up with the guy until he shows us what we need. Well, almost.

I stand there staring at it, wondering if there are any other options. Customers move around us and we’re getting pinned in tighter and tighter the longer I evaluate this purchase. We’re toast. The kids are done and we’ve got to get out of here or else. Fine, I say and wedge the 2-pound can of hominy in the cart.

We check out and need another escort, this time to the car. While the cashier waits, I’m putting on my coat and helping my daughter with hers. She asks for help with the umbrella, but starts pushing the auto button anyway and pops it open and closed in the store. We’re still not moving, but almost. I close it up and let her do it again once we’re outside. The cashier was helpful, but I’m still left with two carts, and a kid running around with an umbrella.

I thought we were in the clear, but now we’re in the parking lot and I’m nervous my kid’s going to jump out in front of someone. So as I’m getting the baby seat locked in and my daughter secured someone beeps at me. I’m trying to find my kid's seat buckles, which have disappeared into a black hole somewhere, when someone beeps again. What!? Do you see us surrounded by shopping carts with our van doors hanging open? I’m a little busy and you’re going to have to wait. I think. Trying to be nice, I snug up as close as possible hoping they don’t run me over trying to get the space next to me.

The lady parks, gets out, and says…absolutely nothing. Not. A. Thing. I start to mumble something and hope my kids can’t hear, because it’s not for kid ears.

I buckle my daughter in and tell her No, you can’t play with the really big, really heavy Ice Dozer (scraper for rough winters) on the way home you might hurt your brother. Then I huff and move onto the groceries.

I get everything loaded, get buckled in and start the car. Then I look at the time. We’ve been shopping for over two hours. Our weekly list is a third of what it normally is, I couldn’t find everything, and we still took for-ev-er to get through the store. 


Let this be a warning, parents. The quick trip is a myth, unless you go alone. Oh, and if you do take the kids, remember to avoid going anywhere on stock day!

Cabin Fever and How I Egged My Own Car

Just about everyone knows what it’s like to have cabin fever. If you’ve ever been forced to stay indoors during hurricanes, blizzards or bouts with the flu, you know that it’s tolerable for about the first fifty minutes and then all you can think about is everything you could be doing outside. Yet, there you are stuck doing absolutely nothing, because you can’t get your mind off of how closed in the place feels and how much you just want to get out.

Well that’s us. That’s been us since day three of our kids being sick, which was about the time we noticed our first child sneezing on our second. So nice when they share, isn’t it?

We’re in the second week of limited activities and instead of watching our 4yo bouncing off the walls, and going without bananas and milk yet again, I decided to take the kids on a quick run to the store. Go ahead and laugh, as most parents know, there is no such thing as a “quick” run to the store when you have kids in tow.

As soon as we got there I struggled to fit our infant’s car seat in the shopping cart. They tempt you with an abundance of food and goodies, yet they give you carts just large enough for a loaf of bread and some butter. How am I supposed to shop? Deep breath, and go.

So we make it inside and my oldest goes for the mini shopping carts. Okay, we can manage this. Maybe she gets the task of helping cart the groceries around, it seems harmless enough. That is until we make it halfway through the store and she starts running around doing her impression of Tokyo Drift.

Another deep breath and I get her to drive within 5 feet of me while urging her to stop taking everything off the shelves and putting it in said cart, “No sweetie, we don’t need soy cheese slices.”

Two more minutes go by as we’re waiting at the deli and she’s got her hands on the glass. This lasts 30 seconds before she starts drumming on the glass and pointing to all the stuff we should get. I patiently work with her and ask her to take her hands off the glass. I turn away to order some food, and she’s got her hands up on the glass again. “You need to stop playing on the glass,” I say. Momentary pause while I get our next item ordered and she’s at it again. “If you don’t take your hands off the glass you won’t get a cookie” I say feeling confident since this is what she’s waited the whole trip to get.

It takes less than a minute for her to go from absolutely perfect to sprawled out on the floor in protest. That’s it, “Let’s go.” She refuses to move and I am forced to hoist her over my shoulder. As she begins wailing, I realize I can’t drive the “big” cart and the kid’s cart while carrying her carcass over my shoulder. I try to set her down and she collapses onto the floor again. All I’ve got left is to lift her up and plop her down on a pile of uncured ham and soy cheese. At least she’s mobile now, sort of.

Next dilemma, there’s two kids and two carts. No way can I leave either one of them. So I’m hunched over at an angle pushing a crying toddler in the dinky kid’s cart, every third wail she’s belting out, and my higher hand is guiding the baby’s seat wedged in the “big” cart, which really isn’t big at all.

We make it past all the wine bottle displays and a nice lady ahead of us in line offers help to guide the “big” cart across the finish line, which is the register. I think we’ve made it, and we have until I unload enough groceries from the “big” cart’s kid seat and try to lift my now calm toddler into it. “Ouch! Something’s rubbing,” she says. Still lifting her above my head with her feet dangling chest high, I struggle to fit her in the seat, but after a few moments I have her secured. Two kids, one cart. Why didn’t I just do that from the beginning?

Feeling I’d accomplished something and not wanting to miss out on sweet goodness myself, I eye some cookies at the checkout and sneak them in with the food moving down the beltway. I heave a sigh of relief and we’re out the door.

It only takes us fifteen instead of the normal twenty to get everyone and the groceries in the van and we head home.

Things were uneventful until I started unloading the kids and groceries. It’s lunchtime, so I had to do it in stages. Kids out, check. Food on table for oldest and toys to distract baby, check. I unpacked food from the front and headed back to get the rest, clicked open the lift gate, and that’s when it happened. I watched in slow motion as a carton of eggs spilled over and the viscous insides of one slid out of the van, crept over our back bumper and jiggled into a pool on our new garage floor.

Sigh.

My thoughts: Karma, never should have touched those cookies. If my daughter didn’t get any, I shouldn’t either. And, I’m so done with grocery shopping. (See also, Disaster on aisle...)

Shopping with Kids - You never know what you're gonna get

Food? Check. Water? Got it. Content child? Well, that’s for her to know and me to find out.

I took my daughter shopping yesterday. It’s a hit or miss adventure every time we leave the house, so I really didn’t know what to expect. But, we needed stuff you can’t find at Target, so I put on my game face, loaded down my at-one-time-hip leather bag, now turned kid supply dumping ground, and hit the road.

She handled the ride great. Only asking for her kid CD seven or eight times instead of the usual million. Thank goodness for me, I left it at home. See previous post on how I couldn’t get the tune “Down by the Bay” out of my head – ‘nuf said.

As soon as we entered the store, I made sure she had her snack and drink handy and forged ahead. We hit three stores in an hour and she had yet to complain about anything. I smiled, but it was a crazy-nervous smile, and watched for a meltdown.

We waited for a sales clerk looking for sizes in the back when my daughter tried to exit her stroller the wrong way. Yes, she was dangling legs and all stuck under the food/drink tray. I struggled to get her unstuck from between the seat and the tray, but she wouldn’t budge either way. Sweat broke out on my crinkled forehead as I imagined the police rescue crew coming to free her, followed shortly by a county worker to ask what kind of parent gets her kid stuck in a stroller.

I paused and reassured her that we’d get her out and she’d be fine. I screamed at myself, in my head, and tried to pull then push her tush and legs back up. She wiggled and I thought of a backup plan – tear apart the stroller with my bare hands and quickly exit the store. The clerk wouldn’t mind – especially if we saved him the pain of our debacle. I paused, she turned, deep breath, firm push and she broke free. My eyes darted around to see if anyone else had caught sight. Whew! We were in the clear. The clerk returned so we paid and got on our way.

The rest of our shopping experience was not nearly as adrenaline inducing. We snacked and chilled while we shopped some more. We stopped and looked at a rack filled with a rainbow of colorful t-shirts. I asked her to pick a color. She walked now – to avoid another stroller struggle. Her hand made a grand gesture across all the shirts as she ran the length of the rack, and exclaimed "I need all these colors, mama!” I couldn’t help myself, I laughed out loud and she did too. It was a great way to end our shopping adventure.