Grocery Store With Children: My Kryptonite

I've found it. Having just returned from what was supposed to be a 'quick' run to the grocery store with my two girls - I am once again vowing to NEVER go assisted to the grocery store again. Ever.

Seriously. My two often well behaved children somehow just push my buttons the minute we hit a store. I would not typically take them with me, but when there is nothing to make a decent meal in the house and I've been stressed out cramming to get work done and know that I have to make lunches and be out the door in the AM - it calls for desperate measures.

After the discussions and negotiations as to who will sit or ride where, why children can't hang off the cart on one side as we roll down the aisle (sideswiping elderly people making our way past the bread is NOT okay..) there's always the urgent 'I'm going to have an accident' cry so that you have to high tail your cart back to the grimy bathroom and park it catty wampus hoping no one will think you've abandoned it. And the whining. I can't take it.

I seriously turn into that super mean Mom who finds fault with every move my child makes. After watching the stepping on of a box of crackers while we wait (as usual) at the deli I resort to the angry arm pull that could easily have someone calling for a CPS investigation. Along with that I pull out the angry whispery voice, vowing no cartoons or any sort of fun when we return home.

I'm frustrated and short tempered and just mean all the way around. I have to say THANK YOU to the store manager (who for the second time) sees my frustration and whisks my cart into a closed lane and checks me out in record time. I know she has kids and I am so so grateful to her for those Mom moves.

So I think I'll have to resort to my co worker's claim of preferring to go shopping at midnight than with children. And if it means that dinner consists of garbanzo beans and some kind conglomeration of pastas left in the cupboard. So be it.