The Joy Of Supermarket

This post originally appeared in Practical Parenting Magazine, October 2010

Lots of people really, really hate shopping with kids. Not me. I like to get out and about running errands with my two tiny buddies. Sure, it can take complex preparation, mild painkilling medication, and an injection of takeaway coffee (straight into the vein, if I can find a specialty barista.) But once I give over to the chaos, the supermarket is the last place left for this Mama to get a consumer kick. When you add people and subtract income from a family budget, there’s not much room left for days spent skipping blithely through a food court with boutique bags weighing down the wrist. A trolley full of nappy wipes and capsicums is the next best thing.

There are two factors that keep my shopping expeditions on track: preparation, and the art of Zen. I am armed heavily with snacks, and have come to terms with the fact that I left control of my life at the doors of the birthing suite. I’m ready for any situation to go in any possible direction, at any minute. Currently, I am prepared for this:

3. The kids will laugh in the face of logic.

Teddy doesn’t like me to place my hands on the trolley handle when pushing it through the supermarket. ‘No, Mama, no hands,’ he orders every time I try and move us along. ‘There are laws of physics, darling,’ I explain gently. ‘Mummy can’t move the trolley though my powers of mind control.’ ‘Stop HANDS, Mama!’ he insists. It is taking us a long time at present to complete a circuit of BiLo.

1. The kids will embarrass me in inventive ways.

Recently, searching the aisles for some random item, I spotted a young shelf-packer. ‘Excuse me, ‘I said, rolling up to him with Teddy in the toddler seat. ‘Do you know where…?’ Shelf-Boy looked up, and in that moment, Ted reached out and pulled my top down to my waist, exposing a full expanse of once-white bra. Time slowed.

I grappled with Teddy, simultaneously proud and horrified that he seemed to have developed the grip of a professional walnut-cracker. The moment was interminable. ‘Never mind,’ I eventually choked out and drove on, knockers out and waving in the wind, to the muted strains of Michael Buble. It’s true that Keith and I like to call the Canadian crooner ‘Swinging Bubes’, but on that occasion Teddy really took things a step too far.

2. The kids will win.

One memorable day, Ivy – aged two - threw the worst tantrum she’d ever had. It went for forty full minutes. In between shrieking fits, she did quiet moaning exercises, gathering energy for the next attack. I tried desperately to ignore it all, and as it wound down into small hiccoughing gulps, attempted some positive psychology. 'Ivy, you've done a good job controlling yourself for the last few minutes. If you can keep up this happy behavior you can have a balloon from the lady at the door.’ On the way home, with my Stern Voice on, I said ‘Ivy, that was very, very naughty, what you did at the shops. What was going on there?' Ivy was happy to talk though what she learned. 'I did cry and cry and cry, ' she said thoughtfully. 'And then Mummy did give me a balloon.’