Birth of the "One-Store" Rule

So it was after our Costco stop (the second of three stops on our grocery shopping spree) that I lost control of my patience with Ella last Sunday.  It’s not that she was throwing tantrums in the aisles or running away from me as I tried to shop or just not using her “listening ears,” a term that we use a lot and that makes me giggle inside every time I hear it... listening ears… I don’t even know why I think it’s funny, really.

It’s just that she’s 4… almost.

The Minnie Cart

Poor thing.  I didn’t yell, but I was clearly frustrated.  We had just arrived at our car, me pushing the gigantic Costco cart (with our six items in it, really) and Ella pushing her tiny, pink “Minnie” shopping cart (with nothing in it, prime for bouncing around uncontrollably on the pavement as she pushed it without much focus).  My frustration had been building; and at that moment by the car, I had no more room to hold in even an ounce of frustration when she declared, standing by the rear door on the driver’s side (Cal’s side), “I want to get in the car by Cal’s seat.”

She had successfully done this after our first stop at Trader Joe’s, adding only 30 seconds to our trip.  But it irked me even then, which I managed to keep to myself.

“THAT’S IT, Ella!  The NEXT time Mommy has to go to MORE THAN ONE store, she needs to do it ALONE,” I told her, completely in the third person.  Maybe the use of third person is my subconscious way of delivering some bad news without making it seem like it’s actually coming from “me,” her nice, patient, loving mother.  But then I switched to first person, entirely from that aforementioned nice, patient, loving mother, “If I ONLY have to go to ONE store, you can go with me; but if it’s MORE than ONE store, you’ll have to stay with Daddy.  It just takes TOO LONG with you.  IT SHOULDN’T TAKE THIS LONG!” And I may have finished it with an exasperated “UUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!”

Yes, the “one-store” rule was born, completely unplanned off the cuff, on Sunday.

I don’t know how much she heard.  She just watched me rant, which I managed to deliver over the course of watching her buckle herself in (she insisted), my hands wanting to jump in and help her as she did so.  I even continued the rant as I threw the few grocery items we had into the back of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat to peel out of our parking spot, repeating that it was just taking too long with her along and it shouldn’t take that long.  I even added to the rule that the Minnie cart would HAVE to stay at home when we go to the ONE store, which I’ve since retracted because that’s just too cute and tolerable if used at one, and ONLY ONE, store.  Ask the people at Trader Joe’s – they think it’s adorable.

Looking back, she was pretty well behaved by comparison to other shopping trips and, really, just in comparison to practically everything we do.  She was just so stinkin’ slow, which she comes by honestly with those short legs.  But does she need to get so distracted by people and what they’re doing or what they look like?  Surely, that doesn’t help her speed.  And why can’t she just trust me that she won’t be interested in a specific sample stand?  We had to go against cart traffic to stop at the chewable adult vitamin stand else risk a meltdown which may not even have happened but has happened often enough that it’s always in the back of my mind as a risk to consider avoiding in the current situation. 

And that Minnie cart?  Again, it’s cute… initially.  Then it becomes a source of tension, either due to the negative effect it has on her speed or because it was made for Minnie-sized items and doesn’t even fit a loaf of bread.  We need to be strategic with what we actually put in there.  Ella doesn’t do strategy or practicality.  Ella does whatever her urge tells her to do in the moment.

And I get that she has a small bladder and is not quite able to put any forethought into the possibility she might have to go potty during our trip despite our best efforts to teach her to do so by insisting she go potty – whatever she can squeeze out – before we leave.  But, really?  When we’re in line to pay for our six items we had just spent the past hour retrieving from the giant, packed, sample-filled store?  This is when she declares for the first time that she has to go NOW?

“I’M GOING TO GO POTTY IN MY PANTS!” she screamed and proceeded to do her have-to-go-potty dance, complete with sticking her hand between her legs presumably to hold it in and a pained expression on her face.  We were next in line to pay, and I was not leaving that line.  After a couple of failed diversion attempts, I simply insisted she hold it, that we were next to pay for our stuff and that we’ll head to the potty (pointing at it) right after that.  She did hold it, and we did make it to the bathroom before her prediction came true.

And don’t even get me started on the stress of watching Ella use a public bathroom – that’s a blog post entirely on its own.

Yes, hindsight told me we should have gone home after our first stop at Trader Joe’s which involved many of the same Ella-accompanying-me factors as Costco did, just on a smaller scale.  There were a lot of people to maneuver around with her Minnie cart.  There were samples.  There were plenty of things to distract her from just moving forward.  And, of course, there was entering the car on the side where Cal’s booster seat is and crawling across.  Instead of a potty stop, we had the pressure of picking the line with the cashier who would think to give her a sheet of stickers – I picked the lady with a pony tail, which turned out to be a good choice but one that almost didn’t come through for us.  I think it was Ella standing at the end of the checkout counter staring at her after we had paid and our groceries were bagged that triggered her to say, “Does she want some stickers?” Why she asked me and not Ella, I’m not sure.  “Yes,” I responded and then reminded Ella to say thank you, which she did.

Had the cashier not offered her the stickers, I would have had to have asked… which, we don’t need any more stickers (we have plenty at home)… but Ella now associates Trader Joe’s with getting stickers and to not get some might have been catastrophic.

While hindsight told me we should have gone home after our first stop, it did not tell me to go home after our second.  Practical to a fault, I still needed to get a couple of things from Jewel and didn’t want to go home only to have to head right out again.  So I told Ella that she could go with me (she actually still wanted to) BUT only on these conditions: 1) she’d have to sit in the cart when we were at Jewel, and 2) NO MINNIE CART.  She accepted the terms and actually executed on them without complaint, an unusual feat for Ella, which I also consider a feat for Mommy… I mean, me.   It remains to be seen, however, if I’ll execute on our new one-store rule.