Yesterday I was sick. I off-loaded my older children onto my ever-patient mother. I kept the baby and slept a great-deal. Every hour or so I would wake up and find the baby there, starring at me. She's only two months old, but she has absolutely nailed "disapproving." She's mere months away from a career in method acting.
I generally grocery shop on Mondays. And as I think I mentioned in my previous post, flexibility in housekeeping is not a particular virtue of mine. Either I grocery shopped today, or the children were going to be getting their servings of vegetables from a soup made of tomato paste, water, and dried herbs.
In the future I should invest in frozen vegetables.
So, off we go. I dropped Munchkin at piano and took Lollipop, Genome, and Firefly to the gigantic Discount House O'Groceries. Imagine a downscale Wal-Mart with a reasonable kosher meat and dry goods section. I stopped on the way at the baby goods store to purchase a new pacifier chain. I hate lost pacifiers. I opted for the baby goods store in the hopes that a baby-specific store would provide fewer temptations for my volatile two-year-old than a general toy store would.
That previous sentence is what we call "foreshadowing."
I selected a pacifier chain ($6 ) and two of those nifty Lamaze-TOMY toys. Remember Captain Calimari? It turns out there's a whole series of those. We got a new Captain Calimari, and also a Morris Moose. Then Firefly threw himself down on the floor and shrieked at the top of his lungs because he wanted something.
I checked out without him. It's not like anyone was about to steal him. When I went back, a small girl was pointing at him and lisping, "he on floor, on the floor." Her father was trying to lure her away from the spectacle my child was creating. I hauled my gigantic two-year-old up on my hip (left hip, since baby was in a sling on the right hip) and headed for the parking lot.
It is surprisingly difficult to wrestle a two-year-old into a carseat.
When we got to Discount House O'Groceries, Firefly was still screaming. He wasn't consoled by my attempts to put him into a wet grocery cart seat. A nice lady came by and asked if I needed any help.
Many mothers report unkind comments or glares when their children cause a scene in public. I almost always receive sympathy when they're throwing down, and compliments when they're making any semblance of behaving. Either I live in an exceptionally kind city, or I look close enough to the edge that no one is going to give me that last shove.
Firefly was distracted by the attention and stopped screaming. He took up babbling to Morris the Moose instead. We grocery shopped. We got back late to pick her up from piano. I fed everyone. We did home schooling.
I insisted the lady behind me in line, go in front of me. There's no way I want some poor citizen with a few groceries to be stuck behind me, a crew of children helping me, and a week's worth of food for six people. Discount House O'Groceries is not nearly classy enough to have express lines. It turned out that this lady had been taught Hebrew by my son's great-grandfather.
You can meet the most interesting people while buying kosher meat.
In a victory-induced haze from the successful grocery procurement, I insisted the toddler go to sleep at a reasonable hour in his own bed, even though my husband was at work until past everyone's bedtime. Eight returns-to-bed later, he fell asleep. Before he fell asleep, though, he threw Morris the Moose at me.
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