Grocery Store Tantrums

While I regularly feel like throwing a grocery store temper tantrum, there are those silly manners-things that Mama knocked into my head taught me that just don’t allow it.

Either I’m behind the curve or Monkey’s slammed right into the terrible twos (I’m voting for that one!).

If I wondered before, he made certain I knew it today. I’ve been sick since Sunday and finally gave in to a Doctor’s appointment this morning. Aside from normal Monkey hi jinks like climbing in random laps and flirting with the pretty nurses, the little guy did really well. After telling me I had tonsillitis and needed heavy duty antibiotics my doctor turns to Monkey and says “You really have an exceptionally attractive little guy”. My throat may hurt and I may be exhausted but that sure made me feel pretty good. I love my doc- he’s former military, has three sons he obviously adores, always has me in stitches with stories about his kids, and is really tolerant of the little guy always being with me at appointments. I’m seriously going to miss this doctor’s office when we PCS.

After the doc, we went to the mall until I got the text message that my scripts were ready. We had a couple attitude moments, but the little guy was good. Then, we headed to Walmart to pick up my meds. By now, we’re getting thiiiiiiiiis close to nap time. I really needed to pick up groceries since I haven’t shopped in almost two weeks between being down a car (have I mentioned that yet? Our land rover has been in the shop for almost two weeks due to slow parts manufacturing in Japan) and being sick. Three minutes into Walmart and it was pretty clear it just wasn’t going to work with a super tired toddler. Home we went and NAP TIME!

ArmyMan had a work dinner to go and I needed to pick him up at 7:45. Since we really needed groceries I needed to add in a trip to the commissary AFTER the Monkey’s normal bed time with an under the weather Mama. Not exactly setting us up for success but oh well.

We’d been in the store for MAYBE two minutes when he had his first ever grocery store melt down. As in, kicking and screaming and doing his damnedest to convince everyone within 3 square miles that I was doing something horrible to him. What had I done? Not let him go after one of those “car” carts. That another kid was sitting in. He simply can’t resist steering wheels.

So out we went to the women’s bathroom. This poor older lady that was cleaning the bathroom took one look at Monkey’s red, screaming face and said “oh, I hope he takes a breath soon” then scrammed as quickly as she could. I set him down in one of the stalls and told him he could put his nose in the corner or he could calm down and finish our shopping. After some very dramatic sniffling, he wiped his nose and washed his hands for 15 minutes and on we went.

My poor tired Monkey did pretty well after that. He insisted on pushing the cart through half the store (and I was cool with anything that kept him quiet). Then, spent the rest of it “reading” my shopping list to me in toddler-speak and pointing to random items with great authority. By the time I reached the register, the circles under my eyes and football-style death grip on a squirming toddler told the cashier and baggers everything they needed to know. A very kind older lady with a heavy Asian accent who took the groceries out to my truck assured me that he would grow out of it and not to worry. 🙂 The whole time she was unloading groceries and I was buckling the little in, she was telling me about her darling grandson’s atrocious toddler behavior.

I was so grateful I gave her an exceptionally large tip.

This is the most I’ve appreciated bed time in a long while.