It is absolutely amazing what trips to the grocery store can teach me! I have to admit that I was pretty terrified of our first grocery store shopping trip with just me and the kids. Public humiliation because of kids having temper tantrums, or me looking completely inadequate were my biggest fears, but I knew this was something I just had to figure out and get done. I seriously had the conversation with Reed before bed discussing the logistics of how I will get the groceries and 3 nonwalkers (what we refers to our children as many times. Yes 2 of them can walk, but not productively. It would takes years to get the shopping done if they walked). I knew I would either have to have 2 carts, the children cart and the grocery cart...or attach Abilene in her Moby and arrange the groceries around Max and Jerry just as I have done before. Reed immediately ruled out the 2 cart situations because in his words, "You are a terrible driver! There is no way you can handle 2 carts." So we decided that the second option was the way to go. He wished me good luck and said, "better you than me," and peacefully fell asleep. Meanwhile, I stayed up a bit longer in fear of what this shopping trip might hold.
If it seems strange to you to be in this much fear about grocery shopping then you clearly do not have children like mine. Jerry thinks that almost the whole store is a buffet and wants to open EVERYTHING before we even get home. Max is great about sneaking secret items into the cart. Before I know it I have somewhere between 5-15 extra items that I don't even need (the funniest time was when we ended up with 7 jars of olives...gross!) They are both getting to the age to where tantrums are not as frequent but they are also getting very active imaginations. I often think they view the cart as a cage for their ultimate fighting championships. They wrestle a lot at home, but for some reason the wrestling is taken to a whole new level once they enter their arena of the shopping cart. As a mom it is my job to raise "normal", healthy, and happy humans and I hate for it to appear as if I am not doing my job because my kids tend to act like kids!
The first time I went to the grocery store it was semi-productive with only one minor disaster of Jerry placing my phone in the fruit section of the grocery store. I can remember telling him to please hold my phone and then one things leads to the other and we get to Jerry's favorite part of the grocery store, or as I call it Jerry's buffet, and before I know it he is trying to sample grapes, apples and even lemons. Somewhere in this my phone is sat down in one of the fruit bins. Thankfully someone was kind enough to turn my phone in and it wasn't lost forever like I thought it would be.
It was semi weird putting the moby wrap on in the parking lot before we walked into the grocery store...which lead me to the first lesson in going to the store with 3 children.
1.) Put the wrap on at HOME! It is cleaner there (usually), so when the wrap inevitably drags the ground at least it is in the house and not in the parking lot. Plus you don't get any strange looks from judgmentally weird people who seem to think that mother and children should be neither seen nor heard in public places. It is kinda weird driving to town with the wrap on and no baby inside it, but far more worth it!
** Side note- I can't wait to use the Ergo, but she is more comfy in the Moby right now, so that is what we use. Hopefully in a month she will like the Ergo better**
There are several things that you do not need in a grocery store that for some reason I used to carry along:
2.) There is absolutely no reason to carry in the whole diaper bag. As long as each child has their pacifier that is all we need. I have no idea why I am just now figuring this out. Did I seriously think if one of my children needed a diaper change I would change their diaper in aisle 3?! Of course we would just go to the car. No reason for that huge bag.
3.) No wallet..No problem. That is what pockets are made for! All I need is my debit card and it fits perfectly in my pocket. Why risk loosing my entire financial world (my wallet) in the grocery store when I am just needing a tiny card to complete the whole trip?
4.) You DO NOT need your phone! I doubt any major emergency is going to occur in the 30-45 minutes I am in the grocery store. Mainly because most emergencies that would concern me are in my cart and attached to my body. If someone (my husband) forgets to put something on the list or needs to tell me something to get last minute he is pretty much SOL and going to the store later to get whatever slipped his mind. It took Jerry loosing my phone for me to realize that I didn't need it anyways.
I have only been to the store 4 times with all 3, so I am very sure I will learn a lot more. Any helpful advice out there I would love to hear.
A very short story about our adoption
I am soooo happy to say that I now have a family of 5! We got the call that our birthmother was in labor at about 5 in the morning. By 3 in the afternoon our daughter was born. We missed the birth by a short 20 minutes. You would think I would be upset about that, but once I saw her I didn't care one bit, I was just sooo happy that I was there. Holding her for the first time was an amazing experience with mixed emotion that I think you only understand once you are in the adoption situation. Thankfully, according to Pennsylvania these mixed emotions only lasted 3 days and the long awaited day to carry our daughter out of the hospital had arrived.
I have never heard of the term "baby bunching" until we left the hospital with Abilene. As we were walking out with Abilene in her car seat, Jerry on my hip and Max holding my hand, a nurse stops us to say, "As a fellow baby buncher, I wish you the best of luck and happiness!" I was still in shock that I was actually leaving the hospital with my new daughter I just smiled and said "thank you so much." I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
We spent almost 2 weeks in Pennsylvania waiting for everything to finalize and thankfully Abilene was in that perfect little newborn stage where she slept about 22 hours out of the day. It was a bit hard being in a state with ABSOLUTELY nothing to do. Autumn was able to stay with us for the first week (and I could not have made it through the first week emotionally or physically without her!!) and she helped me get pretty creative on activities. After spending some time watching the Olympics, soon the house we had rented was turned into a track and field stadium. We created the hurdle event by stacking books, Max enjoyed pretending to long jump over the rugs and Jerry seemed to create his own event of spinning in circles until he fell over.
The one thing we really benefited from having to stay in Pennsylvania that long was we became expert packers and finding ways to travel around with all 3. The double stroller is a must, the moby wrap, and the diaper bag has to be a backpack. We tried to create the last week of Pennsylvania like it was a vacation, but adoption is stressful and we wanted to get home. We spent time in Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes Barre, and Blakeslee. We were only 3 hours from New York city, but we were not able to cross state lines, so it was a huge tease to have all these fun things soooo close and unable to go.
We finally got the call that we were allowed to go home while we were looking at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Reed and I 100% looked like complete idiots with our random white dancing moves (with Abilene attached to me) and Max and Jerry mimicking our moves and singing Old Mac Donald. After a few strange looks from many people we finally calmed down enough to call Mom and Dad and let them know we could come home. My mom is possibly the best planner ever because in less than 24 hours we were home! We splurged and stayed at a hotel near the airport that had room service and movies on demand. We celebrated by ordering delicious food and watching a movie (The Lorax) in bed with my new family of 5!
Once we finally got home it was such a huge relief that I felt like for the first time I was able to take a deep breath. You couldn't pay me to complete a domestic adoption again! I am happy and extremely grateful for the end result of having a beautifully perfect daughter, but the adoption process sucks. I think deep down we would love more children, but neither one of us would never, ever, ever touch domestic adoption again. Our birthmother is amazing and we will love her for the rest of our lives, but making sure boundaries are created and respected is extremely difficult and awkward. I completely understand why many people chose to adopt internationally. We are very happy with our 3 children under the age of 4...and at the moment we are done. We consider our family complete now and we are very happy about it.
I have never heard of the term "baby bunching" until we left the hospital with Abilene. As we were walking out with Abilene in her car seat, Jerry on my hip and Max holding my hand, a nurse stops us to say, "As a fellow baby buncher, I wish you the best of luck and happiness!" I was still in shock that I was actually leaving the hospital with my new daughter I just smiled and said "thank you so much." I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
We spent almost 2 weeks in Pennsylvania waiting for everything to finalize and thankfully Abilene was in that perfect little newborn stage where she slept about 22 hours out of the day. It was a bit hard being in a state with ABSOLUTELY nothing to do. Autumn was able to stay with us for the first week (and I could not have made it through the first week emotionally or physically without her!!) and she helped me get pretty creative on activities. After spending some time watching the Olympics, soon the house we had rented was turned into a track and field stadium. We created the hurdle event by stacking books, Max enjoyed pretending to long jump over the rugs and Jerry seemed to create his own event of spinning in circles until he fell over.
The one thing we really benefited from having to stay in Pennsylvania that long was we became expert packers and finding ways to travel around with all 3. The double stroller is a must, the moby wrap, and the diaper bag has to be a backpack. We tried to create the last week of Pennsylvania like it was a vacation, but adoption is stressful and we wanted to get home. We spent time in Philadelphia, Scranton, Wilkes Barre, and Blakeslee. We were only 3 hours from New York city, but we were not able to cross state lines, so it was a huge tease to have all these fun things soooo close and unable to go.
We finally got the call that we were allowed to go home while we were looking at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Reed and I 100% looked like complete idiots with our random white dancing moves (with Abilene attached to me) and Max and Jerry mimicking our moves and singing Old Mac Donald. After a few strange looks from many people we finally calmed down enough to call Mom and Dad and let them know we could come home. My mom is possibly the best planner ever because in less than 24 hours we were home! We splurged and stayed at a hotel near the airport that had room service and movies on demand. We celebrated by ordering delicious food and watching a movie (The Lorax) in bed with my new family of 5!
Once we finally got home it was such a huge relief that I felt like for the first time I was able to take a deep breath. You couldn't pay me to complete a domestic adoption again! I am happy and extremely grateful for the end result of having a beautifully perfect daughter, but the adoption process sucks. I think deep down we would love more children, but neither one of us would never, ever, ever touch domestic adoption again. Our birthmother is amazing and we will love her for the rest of our lives, but making sure boundaries are created and respected is extremely difficult and awkward. I completely understand why many people chose to adopt internationally. We are very happy with our 3 children under the age of 4...and at the moment we are done. We consider our family complete now and we are very happy about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)