runaway child in aisle 3

And. . .we're back. Somehow Bill managed to place in front of me, my trusted old computer. Complete with all my favorite little photos and files and habitual places to visit with a cup of coffee. Everything but the sound. . .but I'll take it.

And just in time to tell you this whopper of a story. . .

I've never been grocery shopping with both kids. I was actually going to tell you this last week but was too embarrassed to share that I'm afraid of going out in public with my children. My fear is real and justified now. . .

Eventually I had to go out because yogurt for dinner gets old quick. So we did.

The plan was to wear Tilley in my Ergo Carrier (my absolute new fav!) and push Cole in the cart. This was bad decision #1 followed by a quickly made bad decision #2: to let Cole ride in the shopping cart with the little race car in front.

Rounded out by bad decision #3: I decided to use the scanner to scan and bag my own groceries as we shopped. I realize that on a good day, this is a bad idea. . .and sort of a tricky way the store gets me to do their work. My thinking was that I didn't want to be bending down to load the belt at checkout while I had Tilley on me. . .and that scanning as we went would be better in the end. Uh. . .no.

We head in. And we shop. And I scan and bag food. I give Cole a piece of cheese from the deli. He's "driving" and beeping the horn and waving a happy hello to every shopper we pass. Things are good. Tilley falls asleep. This having two kids thing might just work. . .

We get all the way to the frozen food section until we see our neighbor and her little girl. The one Cole likes to share juice with behind the fence. Fantastic.

She, of course, is sitting nicely in the seat of the shopping carriage and Cole immediately hops out of his. Story break: the seat belt in the cart I had chosen was broken. I didn't realize this until we'd gotten into the store and at that point, I figured it didn't matter. Bad decision #4.

We exchange our pleasantries and keep going. But not Cole. He goes limp in the middle of the frozen food section and won't get up. He's wailing to play with his friend. Saying "no no no go". . . loudly. I calmly ask him to stand up and get back inside the cart.

It's really not until this very point that I realize I'm helpless. . .and that my previously made bad decisions are culminating into a gigantic problem. I can't pick Cole up because I'm wearing Tilley. Even if I could I've got no where to restrain him in the cart. And because I've chosen to bag my own groceries. . .I've got three or four of those gigantic reusable bags full of mismatched, poorly bagged groceries. I try to reason with the two year old a little more. . .

He looks at me. Smiles. And takes off running.

He's laughing. . . pure giggles straight from the belly. He's grabbing groceries in a sort of supermarket sweep kind of frenzy. He picks up a yogurt. . . giggles. . .throws it at me. . .and keeps on running! I'm dodging deodorant. . .cheese sticks. . .bags of pretzels. . .paper towels. . .

And if you can picture it (because I wished you would). . .I'm chasing him in a speed walk. One hand holding Till's head from flopping back and forth, the other waving wildly in front of me trying to grasp any part of Cole that I might come close enough to grab.

Other shoppers pull over to the sides of the aisle when they see us coming. Some give me looks of sympathy. . .most give me that. . ."get your #$%@ together, lady", sort of look. I try to make jokes, too. "Thank goodness the seat belt was broken." . . . and. . ."Geesh. . I gave up work for this?" They don't seem to work.

Finally, he stops in front of a NASCAR display selling Little Debbie cakes. We don't eat Little Debbie cakes. He starts grabbing boxes of these cakes like it's the apocalypse and throwing them into my cart.

Like a ninja (well, in my mind anyway) . . .I grabbed his arm, swung his body behind my back and grabbed underneath his legs with my other arm. The only place I could contain my flight risk was in the basket of my carriage. . .along with my poorly bagged groceries. And that's just what I did.

He spent the rest of our time in the grocery store stomping on my groceries. Wonderful. And to top it off. . .when I got back to the car and opened the trunk. . .I realized it was full of strollers and I had no where to put the groceries anyhow.

So the moral of my story is that something as mundane and housework-y as doing the groceries has turned into one of those things that mommy has to do by herself. Another task to get out of the house. Long gone are the days when a massage would get me out of the house. Now, it's groceries and wholesale club runs.

Sigh. I'm sure it was a sight for the other shoppers at least.