Each week I'm faced with a momentous decision: to grocery shop with a cranky toddler who should be napping (after dropping the pre-schooler off at school), or to shop with her happier plus a four-year-old who loves to run and play hide and seek before preschool. Normally, I drug myself with copious amounts of coffee and choose the latter. Week after week, I tweak my system, trying to figure out how to make it easier.
In the past two weeks, I've limited morning fluids and forced a bathroom stop right before the store, and we haven't had to visit the dreaded, disgusting grocery store restroom (VICTORY!)
This week, in my hurry to leave the house, I failed to notice that the toddler had thrown her breakfast under the table (discovered this after we got home), and had only consumed a cup of milk before we left. She was so cranky during the trip, pointing at the bananas in the basket whimpering "Want that, ooowaaahhh," over and over (if they weren't sold by the pound I would have given her one and paid for it afterward). We made it through the store in a record 45 minutes (even with the boy getting on the end and hopping off at every pause to pick up imaginary trash, playing trash man). I got to the finish, only to realize I'd missed the all-important Halloween sprinkles for the girl's school harvest party. They were not in the baking or seasonal aisle. I asked at the bakery, surrounded by cakes, cupcakes, donuts, and cookies profusely infused with said sprinkles. The wonderful lady there offered to sell me some of their sprinkles, as the store was otherwise out. DEAL! While her co-worker portioned them out and priced them for me, she came out and opened a box of shortbread cookies and gave two of them to each of my children (she did ask me if it was OK before giving them).
Quiet content children for the rest of the trip. Do I bribe them with cookies every week? It's tempting!
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