Holidays @ the Grocery Store (or just everyday shopping with kids)

I just got thru reading about some of my friends going to try to get some grocery shopping done today -- the day before Thanksgiving!! Are they crazy??! I went to Meijer yesterday, because I needed to get a few things and they had a game I needed to get for a December birthday present on sale (only thru today, so.....). It was quite a ZOO already. They did have almost all the checkout lines open though, and no one seemed to be doing their big weekly shopping, so no huge full, $200 carts in front of me in line........

Anyway, that reminded me of an E-bay listing from a year or more ago that was sent around in e-mail for quite a while -- just for kicks. This woman had a big long story about Pokemon cards and why she was selling them.....
(You can read it here: http://www.internetinfluencemagic.com/misc/ebay_pokemon_cards.html if you haven't had the privilege of reading it yet.)

I absolutely love this woman's sense of humor and the way she describes her trips to the grocery store. It makes me feel pretty good about only having to stop twice for Cole to try and go Poop yesterday at Meijer. Or, the way he & I must sound to other people around us as he is doing the "poopy whine" right before the second time I took him to the bathroom. "It's coming -- really this time, mom -- REALLY!" "AUGH! I smell it -- did you just poop in your pants?" "No, but you told me to"......(which I did in my disgusted sarcasm of not wanting to venture across the store to the bathroom again!)....."It's for REAL this time, mom, it's poking me"! Of course, the pitch of Cole's voice is getting higher and louder with each sentence, and he does not have a voice you can easily ignore anyway. We must've sounded like morons to other shoppers -- especially the ones who end up going up and down the same aisles with you as you work your way thru the store, you know? These poor people got the whole low-down and update on Cole's poop progress all the way from the dairy case back up front to produce (where there is a bathroom off to the west side, thank goodness!)

I gave up, when I have 3 boys shopping with me -- 9, 6, & 4 -- on any kind of decorum or pretense of sanity when I am grocery shopping. Like I have said before, I look around the grocery store most days and really feel pretty good about myself in comparison to some of the other shoppers. So, anymore, I just bark orders at the boys and try to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. I have tried to give into them sometimes by "buying the behavior" with a special little toy or snack and that lasts all of about 5 minutes with these guys. I have tried to give the bigger kids little jobs like, "Go get the milk and meet me back here"....I always end up either losing them to the fish tanks on the way to the milk or going after the right milk myself anyway. ("When have we ever bought the kind in the glass jar?" [Oberweiss] -- way too much $$! Or no, "I did NOT say that chocolate was OK this time," as the child brings back 2 gallons of brown milk instead of 2%!). We have bought a dozen eggs that we never got to bring home, because I sent an 8 year old after them and they were dropped on the trip back to the cart. We have almost purchased $5 boxes of cereal because I was not paying attention and sent someone after "3 bags of cereal -- I don't care which kind". All the boy heard was "cereal -- I don't care which kind". We have NOT however, like the poor woman in the aisle with me yesterday, purchased 4 jars of applesauce because we knocked them off the shelf. We have been fortunate enough to have only knocked plastic or boxes off the shelves recently. We must look rather comical on the bad trips where no one is listening and the wrestling continues past the deli and produce......this is when the young boys walking with me must put their hands on top of their heads and "follow mom in one line -- like ducks"!! The smallest one riding in the cart is then in charge of tattling on the older ones who "are not 'wining' up like 'gucks', mom, you see 'dem?"

When I am in a nostalgic mood, I realize that these days of shopping trips like this are quickly coming to a close for me. All of my boys are in school, at least part of the day, at this point and it will be a quick year or so before Cole is in school full-time too. Alas, the shopping trips will be relegated only to the summer months and the boys are quickly becoming "better behaved" anyway..........or old enough that I can send them to the toy or video game aisle by themselves soon! Thank goodness for Megamarts like Walmart and Meijer, where you can buy groceries and video games only a few aisle away from each other! :)