Wonderful Life of Motherhood

I was reading one of my favorite blogs today, which happens to be my sister in law,
http://tyandk8.blogspot.com/ and she just had a good post about parenting her 2 year old daughter. If you have an extra minute read her post, I am sure you can relate as a mother. As I read it I was reminded of an experience I had the other day that I wanted to share.

One thing in my life that I used to hate is grocery shopping with all of my boys. In our town you can save lots of money by shopping at WinCo, as opposed to one of the higher priced chain stores like Albertsons or Smiths. The trade off is that you end up having the most miserable experience if you have children with you. WinCo is cheap for two reasons, they don't accept credit cards and only recently started accepting debit cards, so you had to pay with cash, check, or like most people in that store food stamps. The other reason for being cheap is that you have to bag your own groceries. One more down side that I should mention is that they don't have carts that hold more than one child. I am sure that the most miserable day of my life was the day I decided that we were absolutely too poor to shop anywhere but WinCo. (I had previously shopped at other stores to use the Sky Miles credit card.) So I decided it was time to start shopping smart.

Jacob was just a few months old so I had him in his car seat clipped on to the top of the shopping cart. There was no place to put Will and Andrew so they were just roaming free as I desperately tried to collect my groceries while being a responsible parent and keeping my eyes on them. The shopping trip lasted almost two hours and you can imagine how I was feeling by the end. First I was furious because my 3 and 4 year old boys were not perfectly obedient and helpful like I wanted them to be for the past 2 hours, and Jacob was tired and hungry and screaming in his car seat. I got up to check out and still had the "bagging my own groceries" part of the shopping trip ahead of me. While I was attempting to do that, with 2 boys running amuck, and one screaming infant the checker tells me my total. I go to pay and that is when I learn that this store does not accept credit OR debit cards. My only solution was to leave all of my groceries there, gather up my children and go home crying. It is days like these that I hate being a mother.

Well the other day I was in WinCo again, making our weekly grocery trip. This time I again have my 3 boys. As we were headed to check out I saw a young mom pushing a shopping cart full of food. She had her little baby in her carseat clipped to the front of the shopping cart. Behind her she was pulling another cart with her 3(ish)year old son in it. As I passed her I saw that her face was flushed. Immediately I remembered the worst day of my life. I decided to go ask if she was ok. She assured me that she was and that she was finished shopping and only had to check out. Tears filled my eyes and I just told her that I too had been there. I was actually sort of embarassed and surprised at how emotional I became, but realized that I had just spent one hour shopping with my 3 boys in WinCo and was actually having a good experiece with my boys. What I realized was that as mothers we have plenty of days that we want to throw in the towl. We have experiences with our children that just make us crazy day after day after day. Then there comes a day or a moment that we realize how blessed we are and how amazingly wonderful these children are that we are raising and we are not sure how we got there. When was it that I started enjoying my shopping trips at WinCo? I remeber very clearly making a vow to myself that I would never set foot in that store again. But here I was happy to be there, happy to be with my children, not being bothered by the small things they were doing. I even bagged my own groceries without being bothered. And so I thank that young mom for reminding me of the bad days and promise her that wonderful days lie ahead. Life just continues to get better with these little ones and I am so thankful for mine.