Grocery Store + Kids=Adventure. Every Time.

Now that I am a blogger, I am realizing how many moments of insanity I have when everything happens all at once and I'm flailing my arms trying to put out the fire. Looking forward to writing up a post helps me sit back in the moment and crack up instead of getting frustrated about it. Here is my latest moment of insanity:

It's 5:30 on Tuesday night, and I've just finished feeding Jake. Ethan and I ate dinner at 4:45 since Kyle was going to be studying late and I figured it would be a nice treat to avoid the daily 5:30 meltdown. (I call it the 5:30 blues, because it doesn't matter if Ethan has had a snack, been outside, read stories, gotten attention, watched a movie... he just loses it at 5:30 at night. It's been that way since he stopped napping) Anyway, I decide spur of the moment to go to the grocery store to grab a few things, wondering if I can be back by 7:30 for the youth to come over the my house. Two hours, I'm thinking... can I make it back in 2 hours if i just grab a few things at the store?! It will be tight... by the time I get everbody ready to go and loaded up....yeah, I can make it. Ridiculolus, I know, but that's the way it is. So we head to Meijer and we get there and of course Ethan wants to ride in "the sitting part" of the shopping cart. I couldn't have bribed him with anything to sit in that thing before Jake was born, but now that Jake's car seat goes there, Ethan has now claimed that spot for himself--which is kind of nice to have him somewhat contained, but it means I have to put Jake's car seat in the big part of the cart, the diaper bag on the bottom, and that leaves room in the cart for about a loaf of bread and a box of cereal. We didn't have a million things to get, so I figured I would capitalize on Ethan being inside the cart and just roll with it. As we go, I load some things around Jake's seat, fill up the bottom with a box of diapers, and then start giving stuff to Ethan to put on his lap. He thought it was really fun, and kept saying, "Look at me, mommy! I'm loaded up with a big load!" He was covered in tomatoes, fruit snacks, avocadoes, bananas, underwear, flushable wipes, and whatever else. Of course, a few minutes before we're ready to check out my blood sugar gets low, so I fumble down to my bag to get my Glucometer and check, and then eat a few glucose tablets. Some good descriptors for how I feel when I'm low are: Annoyed, frustrated, panicky, cold and sweaty, hazy, spacy, and irritable. Awesome combo with two kids, an overfull grocery cart, and check-out lines and a 7:30 deadline at home. So we zoom over to the line, and we get to where there is one person in front of us and two people behind us, and Ethan looks up at me and says, "Mommy, I have some more potty." Oh, man. Let's see. What would be more inconvenient right now? Cleaning up an accident, or weaseling out of this line and taking my kids into the bathroom? Then I think, I can't let Ethan have an accident when he's telling me right now that he has to go. It would devastate him. "Can you hold it for a few minutes, or do you have to go right this second? "Right this second." I am trying as hard as I can not to disclose my frustration and irritability to Ethan because I want him to have a good experience with potty training and for him to feel supported and confident about going in public places--and having low blood sugar, it is taking every ounce of self control I have ever worked to develop in my life. So, we shimmy our way out of line ("excuse me, sorry, thanks...":) and head to the bathroom which I can't find right away and then the second person I ask explains that the bathroom is through the exit doors and then to the left. Someone's genius idea to curb shoplifting, I guess. I wanted to deck that genius in that moment because I couldn't just waltz my cart of unpaid groceries through the exit, but I also didn't really want to take hats and coats and the diaper bag into the bathroom because I only have two arms... And Ethan is completely buried in groceries. So I get to the exit doors and I start offloading stuff from Ethan's lap unto the basket of one of those sit down and drive carts and then I grab Ethan and Jake and my wallet and pray that no one will steal our other stuff and we scurry unto the bathroom. Ethan had a success, so that was great, but as I was unloading the box of diapers off the bottom of the cart onto the conveyor belt, I tried to figure out why everything inside my diaper bag was covered in yogurt, and why that yogurt was also all over the strap of the bag...and all over the floor! Oops. I had squashed Jake's car seat onto a yogurt when I put it back in after our bathroom escapade. 7 paper towels and one burp rag later, we had it all under control, and except for the blob of gooey grocery store floor hairball mixed with yogurt that I found on the shoulder of my coat when I got home (from carrying the bag to the car) I think we managed an ultimate triumph, against all the odds.
I just have to laugh that with two little ones, when everything happens all at once, the most basic daily activity can turn into a full blown circus act. Next time I leave the house maybe I'll bring popcorn for spectators.