Shopping with 2.

I just did something that I never in a hundred thousand million years thought I would do.

I let my child ride in one of these.

Trust me, I'm cringing right along with you. I'm fairly certain she's going to develop Lyme disease now. (No, I have no idea what Lyme disease is.) Oh, the germs! I can almost hear the good folks from Child Protective Services walking up to my front door right now. At one point, she even peeled one of those stickers off the roof of the car and put it on her shirt. Ewwww. I almost died right there next to the spaghetti sauce. In my defense, I did wipe the crap out of the car with the provided Lysol wipes before she got in. And gave her a hand sanitizer bath the moment we got to the car.

But can we talk about the more important matter at hand for a second? I took 2 children to the grocery store and lived to tell about it. It was actually completely pleasant, minus the germ-mobile. Brooke was super well behaved in her little car. And Joe sat up top like a big boy, with a pappy and a bag of zucchini to play with. We made it through the entire store in under an hour, which was quite a feat considering I had to maneuver that monstrosity of a cart. (I imagine that's what the husband must feel like trying to drive my boat SUV.) And we got everything on both of our lists (including a bottle of wine for Mom & Dad because there's a 6 month old in our house that refuses to sleep this week.) And I did say "lists" plural. Brooke went to the store armed with this:

She was super excited about it. She kept telling me everything that was on her list as we shopped & got even more excited when we picked each thing up. It ended up being a great distraction tool for me.

All in all, I'd call this a mega successful parenting moment. That's not to say I'm going to do this often; it's very rare that I can't get to the store alone (or at least with the husband.) But it's very nice to know that I can do it if needed & we can come out unscathed. We all survived what could have potentially been a very disastrous trip. Joe took a nice little nap afterwards & Brooke helped me put away the groceries (something else she loves to do.)

Grocery store: 0.  Mommy, Brooke, & Joe: 1.

Booyah.