God sent me an angel today

Today I went food shopping. For those of you who don't know, I go food shopping every 2 weeks. It has been this way for the whole 10 years of my marriage. We are former Navy and got paid every two weeks and found it much easier to tackle the supermarket only twice a month!

That's all well and great when it's just two of you. We have doubled our family size in the past ten years and now have little ones that tag along. Because I am a stay at home mom, I often food shop during the week. 1. because everyone else in the world is working and the supermarkets are virtually empty and 2. because my hubby is gone pretty much every Monday-Friday so the last thing we want to do is plow through a supermarket on the weekends.

Life had gotten a bit easier since Emma started kindergarten. Emma despised going food shopping. And to be honest, she was a big pain when we did go.
Now she has the luxury of learning while her brother and I do it.

This was all pleasant and fine until 2 months ago. Ethan decided he no longer wanted to sit in the cart. One time my hubby came with me cause he happened to be home during the week and he made the mistake of letting the little terror out of the cart. This is all well and good when there are two adults around. But when one is trying to shop and wrangle the child, it's not a pretty picture.

Every since that day my little guy insists on getting out of the cart. He wriggles and squirms his way out of the darn seat belts and manages to stand up ready to plunge head first towards the ground whether I am there to catch him or not. And buy the way, I am all for reality learning when it's safe. He is not one to "learn" from his mistakes. He will do something when we tell him not to, even if it hurts him and then laughs. He does it to spite us...I just know it.

Today was one of those days. I was shopping to get all the goodies for the kids while Phil and I are gone. Easy, bad for you convenience foods so my 19 year old sister doesn't have to cook.

I picked my cart, strapped the son in and got on my way. Except much to my displeasure, I discovered very quickly that the cart was the old style meaning it was the smaller version than I am used to. My cart is overflowing with the big cart, so you can imagine how packed it was today. Nevertheless I was to lazy to take my items out of that cart and get a new one.

I tried to fly through the store as fast as possible. We had a few melt downs. Him screaming NO because he wanted to get out. I did the only thing you can do....IGNORE IT and made him sit back down. He didn't like it very much though. I thought I was doing pretty good. Then he saw it. The dreaded bakery counter that has free samples. SNACK, SNACK, SNACK, NO, NO, WALK, WALK, MINE, SNACK! If I were at home there would be no snack giving. But for the sake of my sanity, and the hope to finish my shopping in peace I gave in. He got 2 free samples from the counter.

We approach the check out line and there were two people ahead of me. Not bad, we will be out of here in no time. The first lady finished up, in a matter of minutes. There was only one more to go. Except she has a BAZILLION food stamps and WIC checks. I have no problem with people using that system but after the experience we had had already I was SO not in the waiting mood. Plus, the cashier was about 100 years old. Again, no disrespect to her but this is what you get when you shop on a weekday first thing in the morning.

I could not get out of line because they had no other lines open. Oh yah you heard me right. NO OTHER LINES OPEN! WHAT! So I waited, and waited, and waited some more. This lady had maybe 20 items and it literally took a half hour to get her checked out.

Then a very kind lady got in line behind me. She began talking to Ethan and asking him animal sounds, and colors. She helped me unloaded my cart onto the conveyor belt. Things fell off the belt and she picked them up for me. She helped me reload my overflowing cart since I had a screaming toddler hanging off my hip. And then she said "now Ethan you be good for you mommy, so you can come back here." Thank God for her. If she weren't there to help me out in this way I seriously would have lost my mind. It was so nice and so very helpful. A nice break from the stares you usually get.."another mom with out of control children!" Let's face it, if you have two year old they are out of control. That's all there is to it.

And now he is running around the house naked (because he doesn't like clothing anymore...thank God summer is coming)playing with himself. Good times! :) I better go clothe the boy before he pees all over something.