Summer Shopping Excursions

I found myself at Walmart at 10pm last night picking up milk and cereal and eggs.  It was worth enduring the "night" crowd and the super-slow checkers just to shop alone.  Having to take 3 kids with you makes your really evaluate how badly you need milk and cereal and eggs.  We got by for a few days with creative breakfasts and lunches, but when the toilet paper was gone, and the paper towels that can be sometimes be used as back-up were gone, we had to venture out to Costco.  Unfortunately their hours do not extend until 10pm.

Costco is do-able.  I can fit the 2 little ones in the shopping cart, and Abbey can walk alongside.  We go at lunchtime...hot dogs on the way in, tons of samples as you walk around, and overall happier campers.  Totally do-able.  I find it even entertaining these days as Layne is quite the character and she keeps Landen and Abbey and I laughing at her antics.  She talks up a storm and has tons of commentary on what's going on around her, in her funny 2 1/2 year old speech.

After Costco, I made a quick detour to Lowe's for a tomato plant cage.  I promised that I just needed one item.  I quickly hear from the back seat, "No!  We are not stopping!  You are never fast!  You are sooo slow!  You always say one thing then it takes forever!!"

They have a point.  As we go into the garden section, I remember a number of things I need to look for.  Of course I pretend like we are still looking for the cages as we go up and down the aisles of plants.

Layne wants down and out of the shopping cart when she sees Abbey and Landen find a bench with an arbor over it.  I lift her out of the shopping cart, she takes one step, catches her foot on the bottom of the arbor and goes face down...flat!  Abbey and Landen giggle at the sight of her, up one minute, then down the next.  I giggle too.  I can't help it.  I have not ever been able to channel that inner-sympathetic mom that runs to the rescue.  If there are no cries of pain, I can't help it, I giggle.

She is completely still, face down on the wooden platform for a minute.  Then we hear Layne say, "Not funny guys.  Not funny guys."  We giggle some more.  She raises her voice a little louder, "I fall down.  I am okay.  Not funny guys."

We pick her up and all sit on the bench laughing.  She is such a character.  I have to think for a minute that I am grateful that we have these moments.  Amid the torture of shopping together, there are funny, happy moments because we are all together and you just never know what's going to happen.  And when the whining and complaining sound, you have to listen carefully to the littlest one.  She always has something funny to say and we love her for it!