Notes From the Trenches

It's Memorial Day weekend and our schools are closed for a four day weekend to celebrate. This is noteworthy because it means that when I went grocery shopping this morning I did so with 2 children in tow. Therein lies the grist for my mill today.
Those with children know how coveted the shopping cart with the truck in the front is at the market. There are a limited number of these very special carts that have a truck built into the cart that the kids can ride in while parents shop. The ultimate success of a shopping excursion can usually be predicted from the outset by whether or not one is able to acquire one of these precious carts. Today we won the grocery store lottery. We found a truck cart that happened to have still intact straps which meant Eliana could join her brother in the truck. Things were looking good.
We made our way around the store, I managed to weed through the big pile of corn in the produce department to find 10 nice looking pieces of corn for only 18 cents a piece! I loaded up on BBQ necessities like hot dogs, buns, kraut and chicken. I remembered to get yogurt for the kids, I found some decent prepackaged snacks to keep in the car (I was able to read the labels!), and I even found Eliana a pretty Strawberry Shortcake toothbrush so that she'll stop using Alan's in the morning.
Despite the set of children's utensils Eliana commandeered on one of the aisles, and the random DVD that she picked up in her travels, it was a fairly low stress trip. As soon as we hit the checkout counter it all began to unravel. As I was struggling to unload the cart from the back, Ethan announced, in a weirdly proud kind of way, that Eliana had unbuckled herself from the straps that were holding her in the cart. At that moment I shot my eyes in her direction to find my daughter leaning out of the cart ready to land on her head on a cement floor. I was completely blocked from getting to her by a candy stand against which my cart was jammed. Ethan was attempting to hold her inside the cart, but she was furiously straining against him, trying to escape. At this moment I yelled at Ethan, "How could you unbuckle her?!" He answered that he hadn't done it, but I insisted that she couldn't have done it herself. I threatened to cancel his morning playdate with his best friend. I managed to push through the checkout lane, grab Eliana and proceeded to attempt to finish the transaction so I could get out of there with whatever shred of sanity my children and Shoprite would allow me to keep. As I struggled with my daughter in one hand and my wallet in the other, fighting against her wriggling, squirming and screaming little body, another woman with a baby walked by and said, "I'm right there with you!" It actually made me feel a little better. Then, as I was scolding Ethan again for having unbuckled his sister, I looked down and saw that, in fact, the straps were still buckled and that Eliana had actually wiggled out of them. I apologized to Ethan about 10 times, admitting I had made a terrible mistake by blaming him and contritely asked his forgiveness for my rush to judgment. At this point a customer service person came over and gave my son a lollipop (without asking my permission). I looked at the cashier and said I figured it was her way of showing sympathy for the fact that my son obviously has the worst mother in the world. She laughed, as did a woman checking out at the counter next to mine.
The sisterhood of women who have struggled through grocery shopping with children is a strong one in which there is little room for judgment. After all, one should never judge a person too harshly unless you have walked a mile in their shoes with their kids in a shopping cart through a non candy-free checkout aisle.