Shopping with my children is going to cost me big.
In fact, it’s starting to add up right now.
Just this morning we were in our neighborhood grocery store picking up a few items when it happened.
Again.
While holding my two year old, I began placing apples in a bag quickly. I was focused on buying the few items we needed and getting out of the store as fast as possible.
The boys, who had been following behind me, were now picking up fruit and weighing it on the scales. First an apple, then a cucumber, but then they decided they needed to go bigger, finally settling on an enormous Christmas melon.
Just as I turned around from the apples, I saw the melon fly from Alex’s hands and land on the ground. With a thud and a splat the melon split open.
Alex looked up at me with big eyes and said, “Oops.”
It was here where my moral drawbridge came crashing down. Without children I would have picked up the fruit, placed it gently back on its former resting space and walked away nonchalantly. My eyes would have remained focused on the fruit in an attempt to avoid all eye contact with other customers or grocery store employees.
With kids though it’s another story.
If I walk away from the fruit while I’m with them, I’m convinced I’m leading them into a life of crime. When they are standing before Jugde Wapner and being sentenced the only statement they will give is, “Well sir (in my mind they may lead a life of crime but they will still be polite) I was just doing what my mother does. My mother once ripped a shirt trying it on and she just left it in the changing room.”
I let out a sigh and had Alex place the melon into our cart. I explained that if you damage something in a store you are still expected to pay for it. At least when you are with me.
So with my $3.79 melon combined with the $5.95 doll I had to buy earlier in the week due to my daughter ripping open the box, I am out $9.74.
So as you can see my children are costing me a fortune. I’m thinking of starting a tab for each one of my children. Each time they damage something in a store I’m taking it out of their first paycheck.
And I will be charging them interest.
Children ARE expensive! Shopping with kids is a challenge of patience. Great lesson to teach your kids…did you make them eat some of the damaged fruit?
Marisa will be glad to come hang out with them while you go shopping! It might be cheaper that way, plus no impulse buys!
Oh I like the charging them with interest idea. Can I do the same for my hubby with his impulse buys?
Oh, I don’t know what I would have done. Probably hoped an employee would be right there and would clean it up and take it away so I didn’t have to worry about it.
I love when we get home and are like…uhhh why do we have spicy beef jerky in the bag? Oh because the baby took it off the shelf and threw it in the cart. sigh.
Oh goodness. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation. Children are so expensive, even when we are buying them food they can’t even eat!
jumping over from PYHO …
oh no!! that reminds me of my youngest popping the eyes of the fish out in the meat departments and ripping a whole in the plastic wrap.
I didn’t buy it, but I did make her take it to the man working at the counter and apologize. he thanked us and said most moms drag their children away by the arm with a scolding, never thinking about the meat that will now be spoiled.