>Supermarket Sweep
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As many of you know, grocery shopping with small children can be worse than any nightmare. Fortunately, I have two teenage girls who are more than happy to stop by the store on their way home from school in order to pick up milk or bananas or yogurt or whatever else I’ve run out of of. Hubs, too, is always willing to head to the store and grab some perishables. I try to save my trips for Sundays, when I can find someone to watch the kids while I pick up herbs and spices for the upcoming week’s pot roast, find just the right chicken to provide two nights of dinners, and maximize the potential of my coupon folder.
Occasionally, however, it’s unavoidable. Punky and Bruiser must accompany me to Kroger.
It’s a royal pain when this happens, in no small part because their presence lengthens the trip from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. Bruiser rides in the cart, but Punky now insists on pushing her own kid-sized cart. She also insists on going ahead of me. Since she doesn’t know where she’s going, this presents a problem. She’s constantly turning the wrong way or losing her nerve at the end of the aisle and pausing while the other, larger carts zoom by, or pretending that her cart is “Baby Cart” and my cart is “Mommy Cart” and that Baby Cart needs to bump Mommy Cart a few times for comfort before it can continue shopping, or she’s insisting that she needs more items for her cart, or begging to buy cookies or toys or princess fruit snacks or powdered donuts. It. Is. Maddening.
Meanwhile, Bruiser is busy annihilating a chocolate chip cookie from the bakery and smearing it across his face and all over his shirt and hands. Once that’s done, he begins reaching into the cart behind him, pulling out whatever he can find, and throwing it as far as he can. Yeah. That’s really fun, particularly when the items he locates with his grubby, chocolate chip-covered hands are glass.
But last Friday afternoon, I couldn’t avoid it. With a picnic coming up that evening, I had to go to the grocery and I had to take the kids. I tried my best to keep my brain on autopilot as I pushed my cart behind Punky and slowly checked each item off my mile-long grocery list. Despite my zen attitude, since it was unusually crowded because of the upcoming Labor Day holiday, my patience was quickly waning. Suddenly, Punky rounded a corner and I heard her squeal, “Oh my GRACIOUS GOODNESS! Mommy!!! Look! There’s HALLO-WING EVERYWHERE!” Despite myself, I laughed. A full aisle was decorated for Halloween, and Punky was beside herself with excitement. I let her examine everything for a moment and then we moved on.
A few minutes later, we arrived at the frozen foods aisle. I had managed to get ahead of Punky at that point, and was resolutely pushing my cart down the aisle when Punky shrieked behind me. “Oh MY!” she yelled. “MY, MY, MY, MY, MY!” I turned to see Punky’s cart rolling along by itself down the middle of the aisle while Punky stood 15-feet behind it, staring openmouthed at a long, round, pink cloth-covered insulator that’s normally placed underneath the freezers. Someone had pulled it out into the middle of the aisle.
“Punky,” I said, “You can’t just let go of your cart like that.”
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” Punky said, “It’s just that I’ve NEVER SEEN a SHAW-SESS so BIG!”
I giggled. ‘Shaw-sess’ was Punky’s word for sausage, and that’s exactly what the insulator looked like- a gigantic, 10-foot-long sausage.
At that moment, I felt so grateful to have her at the supermarket with me. I felt so grateful to be a stay-at-home mom. I felt so glad that I made the decision to home school her this year rather than send her to preschool. In less than a year, someone else will be hearing (and doubtless, not fully appreciating) all too many of her ‘oh mys’ and her ‘gracious goodnesses’ and most of my mornings and afternoons will be, sadly, totally devoid of Punky’s hilarious commentary.
And while I’m sort of looking forward to the day my two youngest are both in school and I have a little more time to spend on my own interests, I have a feeling their absence will be more difficult to bear than I could ever have imagined.
This post originally appeared on Parents.com.
