New Mummy Blog: Shopping With Children

We live less than a minute’s walk from Waitrose, two minutes from Sainsbury’s, the same from Tesco and five from Co-op. A dash to the shops to pick up some bread and milk should be a walk in the park – almost literally.

But it’s not. It’s pretty much the complete opposite; a full-blown military exercise, with many levels of planning. And that’s just to get out the house. All thanks to the kids.

Child number one: coat on, shoes on. Great. Now child two. One arm in and the human baby turns into an octopus – wriggly, slippery (what even is that wet stuff and where is it coming from?), and too many limbs for one M&S jacket to handle. Meanwhile child one has taken her shoes off again because she “doesn’t want to wear those ones”.

Off to the shops (no, it’s not raining) [Copyright: Yahoo/Claire Sparks]

Then child two discovers my purse in the top of my bag and starts trying to pull all the cards out and eat the receipts. I know I probably don’t still need that coffee receipt from November 2014, but I can think of better ways of disposing of it than in my baby’s mouth.

Eventually, appropriately attired (ish), the baby’s in the buggy and the toddler’s out the door and we’re ready to go.

Upon arrival, the toddler protests when I say she can’t go in the trolley because I’m pushing the buggy and can’t push a trolley at the same time. I pick up a basket instead, not entirely sure of how I’m going to push a buggy, keep hold of a wayward toddler and carry a basket in one go.

Somehow I manage to steer buggy and toddler vaguely in the direction of the bakery aisle without too many collisions. But I know I’m going to lose the toddler when we turn the corner and she sees the Kinder Eggs. She knows where they are now too, so no distraction tactic is going to stop her from reaching her goal.

Then there’s the ‘help’ she so generously insists on giving at the checkout, handing everything to the cashier, except her Kinder Egg – she’s not letting go of that, she doesn’t care if it needs to be scanned before she can have it.

Meanwhile the baby starts crying because the buggy has stopped moving. Just like when we’re in the car, he’s happy as long as we’re in motion but as soon as we’re stopped at lights or in traffic, his rage descends.

As I’m paying and shushing simultaneously, the toddler starts panicking, frantically asking for the green money. Eventually it dawns on me that she means the little charity tokens they give you to put in one of three collection boxes near the exit. The Cats Protection League would be considerably worse off without my daughter and these tokens.

Then we start the long dawdle home, the buggy and my arms straining under the weight of the shopping bags. But it’s the toddler, carrying nothing but her egg, who ‘needs a rest’ and sits down on a step halfway up the road.

It should have taken ten minutes, maximum. Instead we’re lucky to do it in under an hour.

If my other half’s at home, you’d think it’d be easier. I can go without the kids. It is easier – but only if I succeed in sneaking out the house unnoticed. I’ll pay for it when I get back and they’re waiting for me at the door, outraged that I went without them and inconsolable that I haven’t bought them a treat. Those flipping Kinder Eggs.

But the chances are I didn’t succeed in the sneaking – it’s hard to do with a one year old and two year old semi-permanently attached to my legs with the determination of a baby marsupial. So I’ll take one of them with me; usually the two year old because she can shout the loudest and can walk there on her own two feet. Until she needs a rest, of course.