A quick trip to the store

Yesterday, my mom gave us a small bag of cookies for the family to share. The kids refused to eat their dinner last night and so obviously dessert was not an option. However, Tom and I did finish our dinner and at about 9 o'clock last night we indulged in the homemade cookies. Without the children. Oops!! We ate all but one cookie...

So, today is a rainy day and on these days activities cannot be outside. I decided that the kids and I would make cookies together to replace the ones that Tom and I had eaten out from under them. Only fair, right? Well, the kids thought that this was a fine idea and I had all of the ingredients, except for one measly teaspoon of baking soda. So, since I had two other things on the grocery list that I had missed on shopping day, I thought we could make a quick run to the store. Ha!

Did I mention that last night there was a loud and booming thunderstorm for most of the night? Well, there was. Did I also mention that not one person in this house got any amount of sleep during this storm? Well, we didn't. I still thought that we could make a quick run to the store. After all, the kids had slept in really late. With only three things on the list we were only going to be in the store 15 minutes, or less.

In the store we went; and it looked like we were in for some good luck. Sitting right in the front of the store was the "car cart." The "car cart" is a coop car attached to the front of a cart. The handy thing about the coop car is that the cart also has the usual front basket seat for the third kid. Glorious. That is, until I realized that Miss Julianna is beyond the stage where she will obliviously go along with my plans. She was super upset with the fact that she had to sit in the basket while the other kids we're driving the car! How could I be so cruel? So, I came up with the idea to rotate the children through the cart. Take turns inside the car part. It should have been easy enough. We were only going to be in the store for 15 minutes!!

I could not have been more wrong. So, it turned out that Lily and Drew were too big to fit in the car together. Julianna lucked out with this and got to ride the whole time in the car while the other two switched off. With this plan, screaming ensued. And it didn't stop. No matter what I said or did. At one point Lily was hanging from the cart dragging her feet, crying. And, then when it was time to switch them, I accidentally ran over Lily's foot causing her to reach howler monkey screaming status...and since it was Drew's turn to sit in the basket, and he didn't want to, I had two screaming children. Two screaming children for the duration of the shopping trip.

I am not really sure how long we were actually in the store. It could have really only been the 15 minutes I was planning. But, it seemed to go on for days. First of all, I couldn't find the damn baking soda. For future reference, you can find in on the bottom shelf, in the baking aisle, under the food coloring...oh, and behind the fancy display of one of their impulse buy racks that they like to set up in the middle of their aisle.

I did manage to find everything we were looking for. And I did manage to keep from crying myself. However, what I saw on people's faces was not understanding. When you have one baby or one toddler in your cart crying or demanding something from the shelf, people look at you with empathetic faces. Mostly, you get the "I've been there" looks from other parents shopping in the store. However, when you have two screaming CHILDREN people look at you like you've lost your mind. They look at you like they can't believe that you're continuing your shopping without either whacking your children or shutting them up in some other fashion.

I survived this outing. However, both children had to spend 15 minutes of quiet time in their room when we got home. I needed some time and quiet to recover. I have good kids, really I do. And, normally, they are pretty well behaved, polite children. Today was just a bad day. Nothing a warm chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven can't solve!