a real woman can take her kids to walmart...and survive

every mother knows that there is time in her child's life when she would rather not take them to a restaurant to eat. i'm talking about a restaurant where you have to wait to be seated, order from a menu, and drink from glasses instead of paper cups with lids and straws. a "sit-down" restaurant, if you will. you choose the restaurant based upon which one plays the loudest music to drown out your crying baby/screaming toddler/etc. the age varies from child to child, but it is somewhere between the age where they stop sleeping in their pumpkin seat throughout the entire meal and when they're old enough to order for themselves. you know, that age.


on the other hand, there is a whole different set of age guidelines for taking children shopping. shopping with children does not become enjoyable until they are much, much older. shopping with multiple children is even less enjoyable, no matter the age. or maybe my children just haven't reached that age yet.


today, i took madelyn and ella to walmart to do a little grocery shopping. i usually save such a task for when i'm alone, but i was getting stir crazy and wanted to get out of the house, so we went. it started out badly when ella started crying before we even got out of the car because i turned off the ignition while she was listening to oasis' "champagne supernova". the crying continued when i told her that she was going to to ride in the basket, whether she liked it or not. so she climbed in the back instead of the front where she was supposed to. i pick my battles, so i wasn't going to complain that her occupancy of my cart was going to hinder me from placing groceries there. then madelyn chimed in, "my feet hurt...can i ride in the front?"

"madelyn, i really don't think your butt will fit...you can walk or get in with ella."
"no, i don't wanna get in!"
"then you will walk."
"but i don't wanna!"
"then we will go home."
"fine. i'll walk."

all of this before we even got inside.

walmart on wilma rudolph stresses me out anyway, since they've started their renovation project. i have no clue where anything is. a few weeks ago, the bottled water was in the lingerie department. but when you add children to the mix, it increases the panic attack factor to alarmingly high levels. ella decided she wanted to go to sleep and proceeded to curl up in the fetal position in the cart. good...at least if she's asleep, she won't whine. but then she insisted i buy a beach towel so that she could have a "pillow", and screamed when i refused. madelyn kept trying to ride on the end of the cart, which made it difficult to push and turn, and also made ella want to get out of the cart and do the same thing.

"can i just lay on the rails underneath the cart?" she asked at one point. um, no, madelyn. you're not a case of cokes. but thanks for asking.

but my breaking point was when she informed me that she had lost a shoe. she was standing on the rail at the end of the cart, against my better judgement, and somehow the darn thing just disappeared.

"madelyn, when did you lose it?"
"i don't know. not too long ago."
"ok...was it just now? did it slip off? did you fling it? i mean, why...why is it not on your foot?"
"um...it just kinda came off...it's here somewhere..."

so we began to look. no shoe. i stepped out of the aisle and looked left and right...no shoe. i looked at the rails under the cart, where madelyn had earlier wanted to position herself like a big bag of dog food. nothing.

"madelyn, honey...how long has it been since you had the shoe on your foot?"
"i don't know."

so we retraced our steps. and about 5 aisles back, on the other side of the store, sat a lone, pink shoe.

we won't even talk about the checkout line, the requests for candy and gum and a drink and all of the other items walmart stocks at the front of the store to tantalize young kids. or the fact that i walked in with a list of groceries and only came out with a gallon of milk, tub of blue bonnet butter, and a case of bottled water. oh, yeah...and about a shred of my sanity. i did leave with that.