Extreme Grocery Shopping

When Fiona first started going to the grocery store she'd just learned to sit up on her own, so she had all the entertainment she needed just sitting in the cart. Later we learned to keep her distracted by feeding her cheese after visiting the deli counter. Fiona picked up on that pretty quickly, and soon she would shout out "cheese!" as soon as we walked into the grocery store (and since there is usually a line at the deli counter, we quickly had an impatient child on our hands as we tried to get her her shopping cheese).

As children do, Fiona eventually realized that we were just plying her with cheese to ensure a peaceful grocery trip. And as children do, Fiona eventually decided that providing us with a peaceful grocery trip did not have to be on her agenda.

So on Saturday morning I headed for the grocery store with Fiona, hitting the deli counter as soon as we walked in, even though it isn't the most direct way to maneuver through the aisles. Fiona had a bite of cheese and then announced that she wanted down. After navigating through the produce, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to distract Fiona for more than another minute or two with a game of faux incredulity ("you want down? Down?! Nooooooo-- Fiona wants down?!") So, taking my life (or at least sanity) in my hands, I told Fiona she could walk in the aisles but she had to stop when I told her to and she had to stay within my sight at all times.

Well, she did pretty well. We had one incident where she ran off without me, which led to me sticking her in the cart for an aisle. But I quickly learned that Fiona really loves to help fill the cart. We went through the aisles with Daddy pointing to objects that we needed on the low shelves while Fiona put them in the cart. This meant I had to do a lot of quick thinking--looking halfway down the aisle to figure out what we needed while keeping an eye on Fiona to make sure she didn't decide that in addition to paper towels we also needed 17 cans of dog food (plus giving her a surreptitious helping hand with heavy objects that she wanted to lift herself).

So I forgot a few things (worst of all being diapers--you'd think with a toddler underfoot I might have remembered those), and we had some difficult renegotiations when we had to checkout (since I couldn't unload the cart, pay, and help load bags without having Fiona stashed in the cart). But we got our groceries without any temper tantrums and I didn't lose any more of my sanity than I do on any other Saturday morning shopping with a two year-old.