grocery store epiphany

So, I was at Costco with Angus on Monday and realized something. I should ALWAYS have lollipops in my purse. I should always bring them to the grocery store with me. That and those stupid bags I ALWAYS forget. Like always. Why have I never made this a rule?? We are not big candy people. We rarely use it to bribe or reward our children. Potty training required big guns such as jelly bellies but other than that, we pretty much don't allow our kids to have sweets. That's more a rule that Dan is firm about and not so much me. But I enforce it because it sounds like a good rule.

But I think back to all of my grocery store catastrophes and seriously, they ALL could have been avoided with candy. I don't mean I'm going to reward bad behavior. I mean toddlers are devils disguised as angels, and the only way to make it out of Target, Vons, Albertsons and the dreaded Costco alive is with candy.

A week or so ago, I took Addie and Angus to Albertsons in the late afternoon. I know, rookie mistake. But I had to kill an hour during gymnastics and I needed milk. Okay beer. It was the worst grocery shopping experience ever. I don't even want to talk about because it makes my palms sweat. So I'll just sum up the last 5 minutes, even though my little people were being awful the whole time.

The lines were UBER long. I thought they had that little thing called three's a crowd... NOT!! More like 8 in every line. A saint of a lady let me go ahead of her because Addie was telling the whole store she had to go potty. Then the cash register/computer froze. Then I removed my card out too quickly when the machine told me to remove card she said. What?! And Angus was screaming and squirming out of my arms and yanking the card out of the little thingy you put your card in. And Addie was saying I GOTTA GO POTTY MOOOOMM! I kind of yelled at the cashier and told her my daughter was definitely going to pee all over the place like now if she didn't wrap it up like stat. She finally handed me my receipt. I threw Angus over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes which was pretty much the only way I could carry my squirmy fussy little man and loudly stated, "Worst shopping trip ever!" and speed walked to the bathrooms.

By some miracle Addie didn't pee all over the floor. She actually made it to the potty. More times than I can count, she has announced that she has to go potty then has proceeded to pee all over the bathroom floor. I've removed the rug from the bathroom permanently and occasionally bring it out when we have company.

ANYWHOOOO... the whole Albertsons situation could have been avoided with lollipops, I'm sure of it. Angus would have sat quietly in the front of the cart, Addie would have sat in the back, let me know she had to pee, then would have been too distracted by her lollipop to keep yelling at me. I wouldn't have been flustered and yelled at the cashier. Nobody around me would have been made uncomfortable by the crazy, frenzied mom with her tiny but loud 3-year-old yelling about the potty.

I DID take lollipops to Costco Monday on a whim on my way out the door. Angus is two and any shopping trip is pretty much hell after 20 minutes and I just cannot do Costco in 20 minutes with all the people and lines and samples. Oh the samples. Must stop at all sample stations. Yes, Costco was a BREEZE with lollipops. And I only used two tiny little ones. And Angus didn't even want the rest of his 2nd one. From now on, lollipops always.