Some Friday Wine, er Whine...

When parents of one child ask me "Is it very different with two children?" my answer is usually that it isn't really.  You are usually doing the same things, just in larger volume.   One diaper or two, not really different.  Brushing two sets of teeth, making two sandwiches, bathing two…completely not a big difference.

What I have failed to factor into this discussion is grocery shopping. 

I'm not referring to the cost of grocery shopping, but rather the sheer Herculean effort of managing my two children in the grocery store.  At the end of that hour we don't like each other very much. 

Not only am I a sweating, near-crying, shell of the person who walked into the store, but I have put on a public show of my parenting skills and deficits for a wide cross-section of the local population.  I have hissed under my breath, I have glared; I have raised eyebrows, verbally and physically redirected and bribed.  I have taken away privileges.  I have put my child in timeout in front of the meat case.  (Want to get really disgusted glares?  Try that sometime on a Friday morning.)  I have tried everything short of spanking.

And then when I get home I realize I bought none of item A and three of item B.  I have somehow missed the pint of must-be-gold-plated-based-on-the-price blackberries that my daughter snuck into the cart and all of the meat has finger-sized holes in the cellophane.  The bananas have been squeezed and whatever damages the children didn't do the bread, the bagger has completely finished off.

I miss the days when the girls lay in their bucket infant seat, cooing at passers-by, garnering admiring smiles from the grandparent-types and my groceries were unmolested and unprotested.  I miss putting something into the cart and not having to deflect the set of hands that "doesn't eat THAT!  EW!" and the other set who just wants to grab it and fling it on the floor.  (Hey kids, if you want the biggest bang for your flinging buck, try throwing angel hair pasta and a box of orzo!)

I would still tell any parent considering a second child to go for it, just don't take them to the grocery store.  Ever.