Author: Big Mama

Last night Caroline decided that she wanted to spend the night with her Mimi and Bops, which is always totally fine with me. P. and I didn’t have any big plans so I just cooked dinner and we relaxed in the peace and quiet. I made homemade banana pudding and I have to say it was delicious. Best of all, I slept that long, hard sleep that you can only get when you know you’re not going to hear a little voice over the baby monitor saying “MAMA, come rock me!”

This morning I went to pick up Caroline pretty early because I knew she’d con her way into the swimming pool and after a rainstorm last night, it was way too cold for a morning swim. Thinking I was just running over to pick her up and bring her right home, I brushed my teeth, threw on cutoffs, a Texas A&M 1993 SWC champs t-shirt (it looks as nice as you’d think a 13 year old t-shirt would look), and my flip-flops and headed out the door.

As I was walking up the front walk at Mimi and Bops’ house, I discovered that I was wearing one hot pink and green flip-flop and one black flip-flop. Nice.

If you’re picturing how shabby I looked, multiply that image by 1000 and you’ve got it.

I quickly found out that Mimi had promised Caroline a trip to Shipley’s for donuts so I figured oh well, any place that opens at 4 a.m. has seen worse than mismatched flip-flops.

Apparently our next promised destination was to an upscale baby store that sells satin pillows. Caroline’s satin pillow had “broken” the night before and Mimi told her we’d get a replacement first thing in the morning. Don’t ask me why I agreed to go there in my mismatched shoes. Lack of caffeine or sense, not sure which.

Once in the store, Caroline is weighing the merits of each pillow very carefully. As she told the saleslady (who was very nice considering the tacky state of her clientele) “I have a little head so I need a little pillow”. We looked at pink pillows, yellow pillows, and purple pillows and then I looked down and saw a puddle where no puddle had been. Oh yes, the child of the very unkempt mother had tee-teed right on the floor. It was a proud moment.

I apologized profusely, cleaned up our little mess, quickly paid for the pillow and got out of there with my dignity a little worse for the wear.

This afternoon I had a meeting that was so boring that I can’t even do it justice with words. There’s an episode of Friends where Joey is telling Chandler how much he doesn’t like Janice and he says “she makes me want to rip my own arm off and throw it at her to get her to quit talking.” That was my meeting.

But the good news is that tonight P. fried fish for dinner and he does make the best fish in the world and Caroline went to bed without a peep so that’s always a blessing. Who knows? Tomorrow my shoes might even match.

Grocery shopping has definitely become a different experience since I had Caroline. When it was just P. and me, we couldn’t have finished a gallon of milk in a month much less a week. So once a week, Caroline and I head to our neighborhood H.E.B. for a big shopping trip.

H.E.B. has been so kind as to provide all sorts of things to make shopping “easier” for moms. The Wiggles car/cart that you can borrow for $1.00 is a fab idea except that it really holds a very limited amount of groceries which lest we forget, is the reason we’re at the GROCERY store.

They also have a racecar cart that is the SUV equivalent of shopping carts. Trying to maneuver this thing through the aisles while being directed by a donut eating toddler requires super human strength, dexterity and patience. You can guarantee you’re going to take the skin off someone’s heel before your trip is over.

Once we’ve loaded up with groceries and go to pay, we encounter the Buddy Buck. The Buddy Buck has quickly become the bane of my existence. Caroline is obsessed with the Buddy Buck. Our whole trip has become a running commentary on when we’re getting the Buddy Buck, how many Buddy Bucks, is the Buddy Buck machine working today.

The Buddy Buck is a fake dollar with a picture of a grocery bag taunting you with his smug grin on the front of it. The Buddy Buck goes into one of those toy machines with the grabby thing (technical term) that grabs a toy and drops it down the slot. My problem with the Buddy Buck is twofold.

1. To play the game I have to get Caroline out of the cart and she has to “DO IT MYSELF” which takes forever when you’re looking at a cart full of groceries that are melting in the hot Texas heat.

2. Eight out of ten times the Buddy Buck machine isn’t working so I have to deal with the toddler meltdown caused by the unfairness of life.

And just so you know, when the machine is actually working and you get the prize, the “toy” is a plastic bubble thing with a number sticker. Caroline puts that #8 sticker on her chest like it’s an Olympic medal.

Gulley was at the store last week and she was telling me about how she’d had this epiphany of sorts that she just needs to be patient with her boys, that grocery shopping is a slow process that requires donuts, balloons, and Buddy Bucks. She was feeling really proud of her newfound attitude when she spotted another mom pushing a cart with a little 2 year old girl pushing her very own Little Tikes cart through the store following the mom. Gulley said the mom was loudly saying “Oh, you’re right, we DO need cheese. You are SO SMART” or “That’s SO SMART, we are out of peanut butter”. She said the whole process was unbelievably slow and painful to watch.

Gulley told me this whole story on the phone later on that day and said she couldn’t believe the patience of that mom. So Gulley asked me “Would you load up your Little Tikes shopping cart and bring it to H.E.B. so that Caroline could follow you around and shop?”

I thought about it and told her yes, yes I sure would…if it were the Apocalypse.