Days off school rock for a number of reasons.
Getting up at 8:00am instead of 6:00am. Leisurely breakfasts. Not having to pack lunches or snacks. Having a second cup of coffee just because I feel like it and we aren’t on a timeline.
In some ways, though, vacation days from school can be tough. This usually comes to a head when the kids are confronted by my boring reality, the life that runs the house, the house that can’t come to a shrieking halt just because they aren’t in school.
If we’re at the house then it’s not that big a deal — I do my thing, the kids do theirs, and everyone’s happy. But there are times when my reality requires me to leave the property and, given their ages, that means the youngsters go, too. The errands are usually less than fun, especially for a kid, but it is what it is.
This would be how the three of us ended up in Walmart on Easter Monday doing the weekly shopping trip. The kids were in a better mood than usual since I’d allowed them to bring spending money (and endured the Nerf gun aisle for longer than I thought possible). I did have a full grocery list that we still had to tackle, though, so we finally got going. They were acting a bit goofy, knowing their Nerf guns were in the cart and they’d be free to hit the neighborhood as soon as we got home, but we were holding our own.
About four aisles into the food shopping, though, things started to break down. They got a little wilder. I found myself explaining to Bear why “fake punching” T-man wasn’t a great idea, seeing as one little slip and someone would be crashing into shelves or wailing in pain. This bought me a few more aisles of relatively controlled behavior. It was during this block of time that we hit the cereal aisle and provided our own brand of comic relief for another shopper.
I’ve discovered after much trial and error that my best survival strategy is to give the kids jobs to do while shopping: busy hands, busy bodies, busy minds = decreased likelihood of disaster. So this is the strategy I’m employing as I turn the corner onto the cereal aisle. First we enter the “can we get…?” process that always seems to pop up in this section of the store, and I cave on the Lucky Charms. We keep moving forward and I decide to give the kids a job while I’m getting the oatmeal. (Wow. You guys are learning a LOT about my eating habits here. Fascinating stuff, right?) This would be the conversation that ensues:
- me: Okay, so I want you guys to go down to the…
- T-man: PopTarts?
- me: No, not the PopTarts. Go to the granola bar section and get…
- T-man: These? (holding up the chocolate-dipped granola bars)
- me: No, not the chocolate-dipped ones. Get the chewy chocolate chip ones. Two boxes.
- T-man: Oh. Okay.
- Bear: Ooooh, look! Honeycomb!
- me: Yes, you can swap that out for the Lucky Charms if you both agree.
- (heated debate ensues)
It’s at this point I look over to see the woman walking toward me who actually laughs out loud because she’s heard this whole exchange. I meet her eyes and am like I KNOW, right?! Can you believe I’m trying to get shopping done with these two in tow???
Honestly, I have no idea how homeschool families eat. Holidays and the summer are my greatest shopping challenges — getting through the store without incident is cause for celebration, and managing to leave with everything on my list qualifies as a miracle. We just might starve if I had these peeps with me full-time.
Riddle from the Middle 