today I was *that* mom

You know, the one that you look at with pity or worse, condemnation, as her child does a charming reinactment of what it would look like if Lucifer inhabited the body of a two year old. The terrible twos? If so, God help me.

Imagine this... in the midst of a hectic day or running errands and delivering client orders, I stop at the grocery store. We had no food in the house so it was pretty much a necessity. Logan was fast asleep in his carrier - always a good omen. Dylan was sweet, funny, and angelic. I'm not even exaggerating. I scored one of those race car shopping carts so all was right in his world.

I made my way around the supermarket only being stopped by the occasional elderly shopper who either wanted to comment on my children's good looks and sunny dispositions (yay) or helpfully point out how I must have my hands full with two such young children (hmpht).

Finally, my cart was full and I was ready to check out. But as I'm waiting in line to check out, my angelic toddler is suddenly possessed by the ten demons of hell. Or something like that. He decides that he wants to stand up in the cart. My repeated warnings to sit on his bottom fell on purposefully deaf ears. In fact he decided it was wildly funny to to not only ignore my instructions but to try even harder to climb out. I suddenly had an unruly, disobedient beast on my hands. I was at a loss. I used my mean mommy voice. I threatened time out. I plunked him back in his seat repeatedly. I mean what else can you do?? I was not leaving the store without my groceries and actually enforcing a timeout right then and there wasn't an option.

I leaned over one final time to warn him and...

HE

PULLED

MY

HAIR.

Never have I been so close to losing my cool in public. Never have I been so embarrassed. I know what you think when you see scenes like this. I've thought them myself. "Thank God that's not my child." "My child will never act like that because I won't let him." "They must not discipline him at home." All I can say is that it CAN happen to you. I know that now. So if you happened to be at Winn-Dixie today, please don't judge me. I promise you we're good parents. We love our kids. We try to be consistent with them. Discipline them appropriately. Raise them to be polite and respectful. But some days I think we might as well give up now.

For what it's worth, he did go straight to timeout as soon as we got home.