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How much for the rugrats?
Nov. 26th, 2004 01:23 amHappy belated Thanksgiving, all. Now, onto the matter at hand:
I got to hang out with the kids for a few hours this morning. The last time I had any sort of Quality Time with the wee ones (last Saturday), we had a lovely, lovely time, wherein Abbey, Nik,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rafaela and I trundled down to Schenectady Central Park, the New York State Museum, and Bruegger's Bagels, in that order. All in all, a fine afternoon.
Let's compare and contrast this with today, shall we?
I picked up the kids around 10:30 or so from their Grandma's with only a few hours available Dad-time and no particular plan in mind, except that I needed to go to the store to get a few things for what was going to be a late dinner; since the stores all closed at 3 p.m., the trip had to be made in the morning. Ah, well, no problem, that, thought I. I'll just toss the niblets in the car, make a blitz strafing run at Hannaford's, grab the dozen or so items that I needed, and then play it by ear from there. Great plan, that, except that the shopping trip took an hour and a half.
I'm going to repeat that for you, if you don't mind: It took an hour and a half to buy twelve items.
Mind you, I can't even blame that on holiday-related crowding—the store was no more packed than on your average weekday. No, no, no, the problems in hand wore sneakers and answered to the names Abbey and Nik (or more accurately, in both cases, "you little *!#@$!"). It started before we even got out of the driveway, when Abbey informed me that she didn't want to go to the store, that she'd rather stand out here in the pouring rain, catch a cold and die, and (by the way) "maybe [she] shouldn't HAVE and Thanksgiving dinner." I know from hard-won experience that this is my cue to either scrap Plan A entirely, or else start popping naproxin like it's a handful of Good 'n' Plenty. I did neither, which was my biggest tactical error of the day.
At the grocery store itself, which is where the real fun begins, we ran into a series of minor snags, which included, but was not limited to, the following:
1) me calling home on a pay phone for consultation on menu revisions, while trying in vain to stop the children from plowing the shopping cart into each other and/or the Christmas decor display;
2) both of them attaching themselves to the Aquapets display that the store so conveniently placed by the front door;
3) Nik deciding he was an oversized grocery item, and stowing himself on the cart's undershelf;
4) the kids discovering the basic physical law that states that if they both ride on the same side of the cart, it will tip over laterally;
5) Abbey, counter to parental ex-cathedra law, throwing into the cart a giant box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, then an eggplant, then some pudding, then the Oatmeal Creme Pies again, and finally the same box of raspberry Jello three times before deciding to stash it under her jacket and look innocent;
6) Abbey vanishing at the checkout counter, only to be found at the gumball machines, curled up on the floor and bleating her mantra for the day, "DADDY HATES ME!"
*exhale* Y'know, I am truly giving thanks for both Abbey and Nik this holiday, from the bottom of my heart. But as any parent will tell you, there are those days when the difference between a hug and a hammerlock is very, verrrrrry small.
I got to hang out with the kids for a few hours this morning. The last time I had any sort of Quality Time with the wee ones (last Saturday), we had a lovely, lovely time, wherein Abbey, Nik,
rafaela and I trundled down to Schenectady Central Park, the New York State Museum, and Bruegger's Bagels, in that order. All in all, a fine afternoon.Let's compare and contrast this with today, shall we?
I picked up the kids around 10:30 or so from their Grandma's with only a few hours available Dad-time and no particular plan in mind, except that I needed to go to the store to get a few things for what was going to be a late dinner; since the stores all closed at 3 p.m., the trip had to be made in the morning. Ah, well, no problem, that, thought I. I'll just toss the niblets in the car, make a blitz strafing run at Hannaford's, grab the dozen or so items that I needed, and then play it by ear from there. Great plan, that, except that the shopping trip took an hour and a half.
I'm going to repeat that for you, if you don't mind: It took an hour and a half to buy twelve items.
Mind you, I can't even blame that on holiday-related crowding—the store was no more packed than on your average weekday. No, no, no, the problems in hand wore sneakers and answered to the names Abbey and Nik (or more accurately, in both cases, "you little *!#@$!"). It started before we even got out of the driveway, when Abbey informed me that she didn't want to go to the store, that she'd rather stand out here in the pouring rain, catch a cold and die, and (by the way) "maybe [she] shouldn't HAVE and Thanksgiving dinner." I know from hard-won experience that this is my cue to either scrap Plan A entirely, or else start popping naproxin like it's a handful of Good 'n' Plenty. I did neither, which was my biggest tactical error of the day.
At the grocery store itself, which is where the real fun begins, we ran into a series of minor snags, which included, but was not limited to, the following:
1) me calling home on a pay phone for consultation on menu revisions, while trying in vain to stop the children from plowing the shopping cart into each other and/or the Christmas decor display;
2) both of them attaching themselves to the Aquapets display that the store so conveniently placed by the front door;
3) Nik deciding he was an oversized grocery item, and stowing himself on the cart's undershelf;
4) the kids discovering the basic physical law that states that if they both ride on the same side of the cart, it will tip over laterally;
5) Abbey, counter to parental ex-cathedra law, throwing into the cart a giant box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies, then an eggplant, then some pudding, then the Oatmeal Creme Pies again, and finally the same box of raspberry Jello three times before deciding to stash it under her jacket and look innocent;
6) Abbey vanishing at the checkout counter, only to be found at the gumball machines, curled up on the floor and bleating her mantra for the day, "DADDY HATES ME!"
*exhale* Y'know, I am truly giving thanks for both Abbey and Nik this holiday, from the bottom of my heart. But as any parent will tell you, there are those days when the difference between a hug and a hammerlock is very, verrrrrry small.
