shopping

There's some level of challenge to shopping with two toddlers. For a long time, I scoffed at people who complained about this. It was SO EASY to take two babies out. What where they complaining about?

This was, of course, during the time period when they happily snoozed in their car seats in the snap and go stroller and let us browse to our hearts' content.

Eventually, they woke up, and preferred to look around. Cool. Hold the awake baby (or at least push back the visor). Aim to shop around naptime so they'll sleep in the carseats (or aim to shop when they're awake so they'll sleep at home. whichever).

Then they wanted more.

Cool.
Let them hang out in the cart. (a double cart is a perk. Thanks BJs!).
Sharing a cart worked great too (until Avery learned to climb out anyway).

Now? It is getting harder. We still take them out to the store at least once or twice a weekend, but while they fit, they refuse to share the top basket anymore. THEY WANT THEIR OWN LEGHOLES thankyouverymuch and two of them, not one. So we hold one and let one ride, or get two carts. We're styling. (We generally shop all together, or one of us goes sans-kids.) And now they're getting impatient. They eat tags off ornaments at Home Depot and the cardboard vanilla box at Shop Rite (gross, kind of, I know, I know). They want to walk. They don't want to hold hands.

How long until we can't shop with them at all?

As a related sidebar, why don't more store HAVE double carts? Lots of people have kids close in age. It isn't just for multiples! We JUST found the multiples carts at our local grocery store this weekend (and we shop there a lot - they hid them in the garage, not the surface lot). There are double carts with cars on the front (4 total seats) except the basket is tiny. So your family of 4 kids can have groceries for a single person? Who planned that? And then there's some triple carts...I went through three before finding one with a functional harness (a necessity when it is holding your kid on the seat...maybe not so important for a 4 ft tall kid). Also, Avery HATED this; only Quinn agreed to the full body harness. Avery needs to ride high like a Queen I guess. :)