StealthJew's Adventures in WallyWorld

Three children is too many to take to Walmart. In fact, three children is exactly three too many to take to Walmart. Isn't that a coincidence?

Children are ill-suited to big box shopping:
- Four-year-olds have bladders the size of pins;
- Two-year-olds find everything endlessly fascinating, especially that which is located in the opposite direction from the direction in which mummy is currently proceeding; and,
- Two-month-olds eat/sleep/poo on a cycle that automatically resets every twenty minutes.

It was a mistake.

I tried to explain to the children that there comes a time in every woman's life when she must purchase men's athletic socks in bulk quantities. She must do this because she is too lazy to match socks but too cheap to pay retail for 20 pairs in one go.

This is not the first time that I have laid down my mental health on the altar of economy.

When did I realise I had made a mistake? I realised it when two-year-old came down the aisle with a toy wheelbarrow full of Nair.


Nair

I love my two-year-old. Who else would choose Walmart as the place to say, "you know mom, I really think you need to do something about your body hair. Such as bathe in a cut-rate price wading pool filled with depilitory cream."

My husband asked, is it always like this?

Of course not. Usually, the four-year-old has an adult-sized bladder. The newborn endures Ghandi-like fasts (with less urine consumption). The two-year-old recognises that other Walmart shoppers may wish to tame their own bikini lines, and purloins the Nair in moderation.

Of course it's always like this. Given that no one cried and no one disobeyed (even when told to abandon a wheelbarrow full of Nair), this was pretty good.

A matter of timing

I've discovered where I went wrong with this entire parenting enterprise. It was, you see, a matter of bad timing.

I had my first at 22. This was too late to be a disgrace to the family, as my brother charmingly put it. It was too late for sympathetic social programs. It was too early for minivans and yoga pants. Three years later, I still don't own a minivan or yoga pants. And I am either ten years too old or ten years too young for the nearest suitable peer groups.

I thought it might all even out as I kept having children. But I've discovered that one's parenting peer group is really set with the oldest child. I think it's because having a first child together is a formative experience in a way that subsequent children are not. You can only get excited, really excited, about the colour of baby feces once in your life. When that window is closed, it's closed forever.

So here I am. And maybe in other parts of the country, women in their early twenties get married and have babies all the time. But where I live, child-bearing rarely comes before investment in the real estate market. And real estate is expensive.

I've always been a bit out of step, and now I've gone and had babies when I was supposed to be having lovers.

I must find a way to blame this on the housing bubble.