Shopping Shenanigans

I didn't enter this motherhood thing lightly. It took a long, long time for MacTroll and I to decide we wanted to have a baby. The 13 years prior to the X-era was spent watching people and their children.

I'd stand in line at the Target as some everyday mother tried to negotiate her way through the checkout line with a baby in the cart, a toddler running in circles, an older kid crying for a candy bar and a pre-teen pretending not to know who these people were. My heart felt bad for her. She had a tough job doing an every day thing. And when she raised her voice or grabbed ahold of her toddler's hand and kneeled down and told the kid how it was gonna be -- which lead to the time bomb going off and the kid falling apart, I looked away like I had completely invaded something intimate and personal. 

KTDID and I bit the bullet when I first moved to C-U and drove up to Schaumburg to Ikea. Before we went, we decided what we wanted. We took the box measurements from the web site and decided which car would work better. Ultimately, we decided on her Honda Civic (the choice was between the Honda or my VW Golf). We successfully navigated Ikea on a Saturday without 1) murdering each other, 2) screaming at each other or 3) watching someone's marriage fail in the checkout line. 

We successfully packed up her car with our items, but while we were doing so, we were parked next to a family driving a Suburu Outback. They had two boys around 6-8 years of age and the parents were so livid with each other they were barely talking. The car just kept filling up with bags and boxes of crap. The backseat went down and still the crap piled up against the windows. When the car was full the mother said, "You take this home and unload, the boys and I will go get lunch and wait for you to come back.

The father replied, "If I leave here, I'm NEVER coming back. Get in the car."

So the family drove away with one child sitting on the arm rest area between the two front seats and the smaller child on Mom's lap, with her seat pushed so far forward, her legs were slammed against the dashboard. 

A family member once told me a story about how if her kids threw a tantrum in a store, her husband would just walk away. He was so embarrassed by the people staring at his kid, he would just abandon his wife and leave her to take care of it. 

It feels like eavesdropping, watching these families and hearing their stories. But now that I'm a parent, I realize that when you're in the moment, you do what needs to be done -- whatever the hell that might be. And sometimes when you're pushing your shopping cart out to your car, you're smacking yourself in the forehead for not having more patience or for having manhandled your kid into the cart to get him from tearing apart a display. Most of the time, if you are the primary parent to your kids you know that 10 percent of the time your kid acts crabby, because he's a kid. He gets tired and hungry and irritable. He doesn't talk or deal with logic. He just feels and reacts. 

For example, I used to take X-man grocery shopping with me all the time. He loved it, particularly if we were at Meijer (the deli ladies there give out free cheese to the kids). Now we mostly shop at the Schnuck's because it's 6 miles closer to our house and has better produce.

But the moment we walk in, it's like running through a maze. 

Will he flip out if one of the two carts with little cars at the front aren't available for us? Will he stay in the little car, if we do get a cart? Will he be angry when we stop at the deli counter and the employees don't give out freebies? Will he toss a fit if MacTroll tries to push him in the cart (which is apparently not allowed these days)? Will he throw a fit if MacTroll wanders too far away from the cart to run to get something Looseyfur forgets? If they move the display of Cars cars near the cereal aisle and he sees them -- will he lose his mind because I won't let him look at them or buy them? 

It's so much easier to do the shopping now without him. But sometimes, I look at the cart with the kid seat filled with bread and eggs and delicate fruit instead of my sweet boy's face and I miss him. I remember when he could first sit there at 8 months, and I'd bend over the cart as I walked down the baby food and diaper aisles and kiss his head as he looked around curious about all the people and "stuff."

He'd giggle when I'd open musical cards for him (something he still enjoys now -- he thinks they're books). 

And he'd smile at all the senior citizens and babies as we cruised past.

I'm hoping one day I'll get my little errand running buddy back. After all, my eldest nephew still loves Target at nearly 13... but right now, I'm okay with going it alone to get the job done faster, so we can spend some quality time together as a family doing fun things rather than spending it miserable in a grocery store.