Dear Mother of More Than One Child,
How the heck do you do it!?
Love, Me
Pseudo-Mother-of-Two
Let me tell ya what, folks, if you thought carting around one child to do grocery shopping was a challenge, you're in for a big shocker. Though, most of you probably already know that.
In case you didn't know, here are some things I learned today.
10 Things I Learned as a Pseudo-Mother-of-Two While Grocery Shopping:
1. When you hear a ding and the “door-ajar” light illuminates on your dashboard, it’s usually a good time to pull over and reestablish car safety. Don’t forget to lock the doors every time you begin driving because it may happen again.
2. Just because you buckle a 13 month old into a grocery cart seat provides no guarantee that he will actually stay in the seat. Facing forward. Sitting down.
3. Pulling a two year old out of the cart basket and urging “now stay by the cart, please!” provides no guarantee that she will actually stay by the cart.
4. Old people don’t think it’s very funny to have a two year old using them as cones in an imaginary obstacle course.
5. When you decide to unbuckle the 13 month old so he can freely turn to chat with the two year old, there is a high probability he may do a front flip dive bomb into the cart’s basket while your back is turned. (thankfully, and luckily, not the other direction)
6. If two year old comes back to the cart, it may be a good idea to place her in the buckling seat and remove the 13 month old since he has a strange fascination with pushing the cart. This may, however, backfire and result in much slower movement, more icy stares, and random objects in little hands.
7. Upon arrival at the check-out lane, it’s a really good workout to hold a squirmy 13 month old in one arm and load groceries onto the belt with the other arm. There is a good chance the cashier will finish the transaction before you can manage to get your wallet out.
8. During the Aldi cart-change-at-cashier is a good time to re-buckle the 13 month old into the seat and transfer two year old to the ground.
9. Thank goodness for double seated grocery carts at Costco!
10. Good luck getting all the groceries inside without another catastrophe happening.
Overall, it was quite a humorous experience looking back on it. I now understand from experience how so many of you feel when people give you strange, icy, curious, looks in the store with more than one child. In my case, this sweet girl I'm watching looks very much like she could be my son's older sister. I look young enough as it is to have one child, but to have two seems absurd to other fellow shoppers.
So, I tip my hat to you, mothers of multiple children, and commend you for your difficult work and for surviving any excursion outside your home without falling to pieces and dive bombing into a box of Godiva chocolates.
If only we could be blessed with octopus arms and instruction manuals when we decide to have kids!
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P.S. After this excursion I fully believe puppies to be completely different than kids (in at least one way): You can leave them home while you go out!
It is different when its your own child. You probably felt like you couldn't yell or be stern with other child so she felt like she could get away with murder..lol!! But my advice would be take your child everywhere with you this gets them used to going out and understanding what the rules are. Dont stay at home "saying I can't go anywhere" my child acts so "crazy" in public. It's because THEY NEVER TAKE THEM ANYWHERE!! BTW I love your blog your pretty awesome!! You probably get that from your mother!!!
ReplyDeleteHow funny. I remember wishing for Octopus arms when Abbey was a baby. Not only wishing, but thinking it was downright unfair that I didn't have them! I can't imagine how moms of multiples must feel!
ReplyDeleteI also remember my first experience with taking two babies with me to the grocery store, Abbey was three months and Aiden was five months. They both stayed in their car seats, but there was the trouble of finding a place for the food!
When Abbey was a toddler, I rarely put her in the cart. I wanted her to have the freedom to explore her surroundings and learn how to behave in a store. By the time Madison came along, Abbey had seen the store many times and had no problem sitting in the cart. If she wanted a closer look at something, I'd let her out for a moment, then put her back and she handled it just fine. Madison was more of a lazy baby and toddler. She wanted to be carried/pushed everywhere (still does). She never wants out of the cart and gets mad if her feet hit the ground!
Roxanne is so right. It's totally different when they are both yours because you've trained them to do what you expect.
I will never forget the time I was with Tiffany in Florida and Abbey was eleven months old, just barely starting to walk. Tiff was watching her friend's three year old daughter and we took all of the kids to the beach. I got the little girl out of her carseat and set her on the ground outside of the car. I turned back to get Abbey out and the girl darted right into traffic. Luckily, Tiff was getting stuff out of the trunk and caught her just in time. It was a really dumb move on my part, but I was not used to having toddler yet and I did not expect her to do that! We were very lucky that day.
I thought nothing made having one kid seem easier than having two. I imagine this trend continues as more are added.
ReplyDeleteIT's an even trickier situation when you take 2 kids to the store, have to put both of them in the cart because neither one are confidently walking yet, but one of them has a disability and doesn't understand when you tell her not to throw things out of the cart, etc... True story. I'm just lucky no one has (to this point) been in the line of fire when Madi decides to launch things out of the cart. Also, I'm lucky that none of the packaged items have burst apart yet...
ReplyDeletemy cat's pretty squirmy when i try to take him places too. . .
ReplyDeletei like this post a lot :)