I’d had a long day the Sunday before finals week (Isn’t Sunday supposed to be a day of rest?) and I realized my day wasn’t quite over at 8 p.m. when I realized I still needed to go grocery shopping. I told my daughter she could come with me because now at 5, she’s more of a help and less of a hindrance when we go to the store. She holds my list, tells me all the things I forgot to put on it and generally asks, “Mom, is that on sale?” enough times that she’s training me to look for what’s on sale 100% of the time.
But as soon as we get our shoes on, my son comes running in from the dining room. He’s three and a major foodie like his mama. He eats anything and everything. Going to the grocery store with him is like putting a bird on a leash and expecting it to sit quietly in the cart. In other words: it’s not going to happen. Whenever I take him to the store, he gets in the cart and damn near has a musical going about the wonder that is the grocery store. “Oh, bananas!!” he sings in his Oprah voice (if he knew who Oprah was). Same three-note inflection and all. “Popsicles! Popcorn! Pretzels! Watermelon! Oh joy!!!!”
I kind you not. So I tried to tell him that only the girls were going and he could stay with daddy. Well, bump that, he must have thought. And he went to get his shoes on too.
As predicted, he was his usual merry and jolly self, excited by everything and anything. It’s frustrating to me because I just want to get in and get out. No such thing as leisurely shopping when I have the two of them with me.
By the time we get to the car, my nerves are frazzled and I just want to go to bed. As I buckle them in, my son is still yelling about something he saw. (He does not have an inside voice.)
“Mommy has a headache,” I tell them. “You have to be quiet now.”
He just smiles and yells, “You have a headache, Mommy?”
I clench my jaw. “Yes, I do. I need you to be quiet.”
I could feel the frustration building because my head was pounding, it’s cold, my son keeps squirming and yelling so I can’t buckle him in and it’s late. I get in the front seat and lead my head back against the headrest for a minute.
Then I had a stroke of Mommy genius so bright I had to share.
I got the keys out my pocket and started the car. “Do you two see the moon over there?”
They both strain their necks to see. “Yeah, we see it!”
“Well, we’re going to race the moon home,” I say casually, throwing the car into reverse. “Let’s see if we can beat it.”
“Yeah!” they scream out. “Let’s do it! Beat it, Mom!”
I pullout the parking lot and they’re checking our position. “The moon is ahead of us!” my son screams. “Mommy, go faster!”
I turn onto the freeway, which is actually the quickest way home. “We’re gonna beat it!”
My daughter looks out her window. “Mom, we’re doing it! We’re going faster than the moon!”
As I follow the curve on the freeway, the moon looks like it’s ahead of us, then it looks like it’s lagging behind. But as we get off the freeway (around the corner from our house), the moon is ahead of us again.
“It’s going to beat us!” they shriek in unison.
“No, it’s not,” I say, putting my finger to my lips. “The moon doesn’t know where we live. So we have to be very quiet and we can still beat him.”
“Ooooh,” they say. They fall silent in the backseat, looking up at the moon.
We turn to our street. “Hurry, Mom!” my son yells. “The moon is already on our street!”
“But he doesn’t know where we live,” I whisper. “We’re going to sneak up on him and beat him in the driveway.”
Sure enough, I pull the car into the garage and the moon “looks” like it’s about three streets away. “We did it!” I say to the little ones. “The moon got lost and because you were quiet, we beat it home!”
My kids got out the car and started yelling at the moon in the driveway. “Yeah, moon! We beat you! Hahahaha!”
I swear my son wanted to say, “Yeah, moon! Suck it!” LOL. But instead he said, “You’re not faster than us, moon!”
My husband opened the door and looked puzzled. “What’s all this noise?”
“We raced the moon home,” my daughter said casually. “…And we WON!”
All in a day’s work as a mom, I suppose. *wink*
LOL! Good one!
Oh this was too cute! The things us moms have to go through in order to keep the kids entertained and salvage the rest of our sanity. I will keep this idea in my bags of tricks!