Last week I found myself once again in the grocery store with two toddlers.
Honestly, it is getting MUCH better! Micah is learning that he has to stay in the shopping cart without fussing (and no, he cannot stand up in the seat!), and Mara rides (or walks beside me) without incident most of the time. In the grocery store parking lot, Mara’s eyes are fixed on the shopping cart selection, hoping against hope that a “little blue car” (with two steering wheels–one for her, one for Micah) will be available.
Well, on this particular day, we did find a cart, but being in the inner-city, someone had removed both steering wheels, rendering the cars, in Mara’s mind, useless.
An elderly man walked by and smiled at the kids. “Are you driving?” he asked cheerfully.
With a doleful expression, Mara shook her head. “Nooo. It doesn’t have a steering wheel.”
Soon enough she cheered up though, when I told her the other option was to ride in a regular shopping cart.
She then began alternately shouting “Prepare to DIE!!!” and loudly singing “YOU are ALWAYS with me, JESUS! Where can I GOOOOOO? Where can I HIIIIIDE?” (from Sovereign Grace’s Awesome God CD).
We made it through my list without incident. Although it was almost noon, so the kids were getting hungrier by the minute.
As I bagged the groceries in the checkout line and tried to watch the cashier ring up each item, Micah kept reaching for everything I put in the back of the shopping cart.
He reached for bananas. He reached for grapes. Ginger snaps.
And suddenly I turned around to see my 16-month-old son sitting there in the shopping cart, holding a pork chop! It happened in just an instant, while my back was turned. Apparently he had reached into the bag behind him, clawed through the cellophane wrap and pulled out the raw meat!
It’s moments like these when you want to grab the raw pork chop out of your son’s hands, look around the store and exclaim, ‘Has anybody seen his mother?!’
People around us were laughing–and, quite frankly, I was surprised how quickly a small child could capture the attention of several checkout lines without making a sound. A Shoprite employee grabbed the meat and offered to re-wrap the remaining portion. Another brought me paper towels doused in hand sanitizer to wipe Micah’s hands.
The cashier said, “I think he’s hungry.”
And as I was leaving, a man a few lines down called out, “Take that boy home and FEED him!”
———-
As if I didn’t feel sufficiently inept to be a stay-at-home mom after the grocery store episode . . . I dropped the bag holding two dozen eggs on the floor as soon as I got home.
And the casserole that was supposed to bake at 350 for an hour? . . . Somehow it baked at 500 for the first 45 minutes . . . ??
Wow . . . what a day!
