Little Lady and Little Red were fairly easy toddlers. I don’t remember either of them having tantrums while out and about running errands. For the most part, Little Man, is a mellow guy who “helps” me with pushing the cart and even placing items in the cart. Yeah, I gotta be on my toes when it comes time to say howdy to the cashier. There were no surprise goodies to put to the side on this errand. Nice. There was however, a rather grumpy toddler who lost it when I took the bag out of the cart before Little Man pushed it into the cart area. He was furious with me and was not keen on holding my hand and crossing the street to get to the car. Little Man was showing just how stubborn three year olds can be and was planting his feet firmly at the doors of the store. That’s when I had to pull the I’m-your-ride-card and act like I was going to the car with or without my little guy. Sure enough, he came with me.
Getting Little Man into the car seat and then buckled, was another story. I read a meme last week that in summary, says, yeah, great you ran a race but I put a toddler in a car seat. That was this moment. By the time I got this guy buckled into his car seat, I could have used a margarita followed with a massage or a nap. These little people mean business and regarding the car seat episode, this was not my first rodeo, as the two older offspring also liked to challenge me when they were toddlers. Through this whole awesome moment, I managed to stay calm, even fighting laughter because there was so much emotion packed into that darling little human! At that point, I just couldn’t contain it anymore and began to laugh. I think if Little Man regularly had tantrums while out in public, I wouldn’t find it one bit humorous but since this was an isolated case, I had to chuckle. Staying calm and becoming angry worked in my favor because once he had calmed down, he hugged me and told me that he loved me. Ah . . . the rest of the day was perfect. Kidding! It wasn’t. I mistakenly thought we had a small window for one more speedy errand. Yeah, wrong. Little Man had another tantrum at a nursery because I put the plants in the cart where he thought he’d be sitting. This bout of strong emotion was much shorter in duration, thank heavens. The employee that was helping me, reassured me he was fine, that she’d raised kids and this is what they do. I wasn’t stressed by the crying and anger of Little Man, but her words were still appreciated. Parenting is tough!
So, today was a day of checked off items on my list with one or two surprises. Oh well, at least those good times, ha, have been experienced. Yep, good times, good times.
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