Time Flies, Part I

Had to make a very quick grocery store run today. I ran into numerous moms at SuperTarget, babies in car seats, kids in carts, kids walking by moms holding cans of baked beans. (really, he was adorable, and a good little helper).

**May I just pause a moment here, to let all of you know that proper grammar or sentence structure are not all that important to my blog, I write the way I think. So, if you are looking for subjects, and verbs, and proper punctuation, you have come to the wrong blog.**

As I whipped through the aisles, filling my cart with items from my carefully crafted list of things I needed to get us through the weekend, I was reminded of the millions of trips I made to the grocery store with Charlie, back when he was my constant companion.

First of all, just getting ready to go to the store required forethought. Sippy cup or juice box? Check. Cheerios in a ziploc bag? Check. Spare Diaper? Check. Current favorite toy? Check. Then the bundling of the child in winter, the car seat dance, the childfriendly music on the radio, okay, we were set to go.

At the store, I tried to make it fun for both of us. I would have him look for colors in the produce section: yes, those grapes are purple! the bananas are yellow! the cucumbers are green! let's count the red peppers! Moving on to meat: what does the cow say? what does the pig say? where do the animals live? And on throughout the store. I could never get out of there in under an hour. And back then, I did a lot of shopping at the bag-your-own places, so I had to make sure he was entertained in the shopping cart while I was bagging things up. As he got older, I would stand him in the cart with his own bag so he could "help".

Now, I can breeze in, and breeze out, and even have time to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks on my way out of Super Target (which I really wish I could have shopped at back in the day, the one stop shopping would have been a dream). I don't have to think about packing anything before I go shopping, other than my wallet and coupons. I don't have to get the kid in the car seat, load up the groceries, return the cart and make sure no one was stealing my child. Or break open the Goldfish for the ride home, because he had seen me put them in the cart.

But watching those moms today, with their adorable little kids in their carts, I kind of missed it. I didn't have anyone to talk to while I shopped, or to help me decide which fruit to buy. And honestly, I kind of missed counting the red peppers.