I Love Shopping?

This morning I loaded up the three kids (I look after a friend's daughter, Jordan, during the week) and carted them all to Trader Joe's for our weekly groceries. In order to survive the trip through the store without inflicting serious injury on anyone or anything in our path, I strap Anna to my chest with the Baby Bjorn and put the two three-year-olds in the cart and bury them under the groceries as we go.

I fondly recall strolling through the grocery store when Charlie was a baby and people would smile and stop me to tell me how beautiful he was, ask his age, coo at him, tell me how lucky I was to have such a precious baby, etc. I think I actually looked forward to going to the grocery store for that very reason. Boy, have times changed. These days people look at me with sheer and utter pity and scurry down the aisle, (leaving much needed items behind, I'm sure), simply to escape the threat of being smacked in the head with a falling box of cereal freshly ripped from the shelf or having a run-away canned good rip their feet out from under them, a baby put drooly fingers in their hair, or me inadvertently scrape the first three layers of skin off the back of their heels with my cart as I am desperately reading labels in search of a fruit juice without high fructose corn syrup.

All that being said, today was a new low as we added "making everyone in the store want to vomit profusely" to our list of offenses. We were in the fruit section when Charlie spotted the blueberries and inevitably started to beg, as they are his favorite fruit. Grateful he was begging and whining for something other than iced donuts, I quickly complied and placed the carton of blueberries into the cart, somewhere between Jordan's pitifully squished thighs. That's when Charlie announced to everyone within (and out) of earshot in his loudest and proudest shout, "Mommy, blueberries make you poop!". It wasn't so much the claim that I found humiliating (I mean, they do have a lot of fiber) as his use of the word you rather than me. We cleared out the fruit section. Don't think I'll be heading back to Trader Joe's any time soon...