I am the primary grocery shopper in our family and for good reason. Your father is painfully slow when it comes to shopping. I know he thinks that you and I spend our days frolicking around, drinking coffee all cute and carefree but really it's mostly the cleaning, entertaining of you, household chores and shopping that take up the bulk of our day. A perfectly blended hot coffee, whether home made or bought is definitely a luxury that I don't get to indulge in often enough. Likewise high intensity exercise and time alone are things I definitely took for granted before you came along.
But back to the shopping. The practicality of aisle-hopping with a toddler is never an easy one. You're finally at the age where you enjoy sitting in a shopping trolley but given your increasing mobility, only for very short periods. Consequently, our shopping trips need to be focused and quick, no dilly-dallying or poring over what brand of tea bag or soft cheese to try. Any lapse in concentration invites disaster. I am reminded of the occasion we met a friend and her baby in the supermarket and our attention was averted momentarily as we exchanged greetings. In the meantime her daughter had inched closer to the shelves housing jars of olives and other Mediterranean preserved vegetables. It wasn't until the sound of shattering glass sent us jumping that we realised in horror what had transpired, and all in the space of time it took to stop and say hello. What horror!
Given that this image is burned in my mind for all eternity and that I have never had much time for shopping, I always write a list before heading to the shops and when I don't, I have in mind what I will cook. It is with some regret then that I sent your daddy into the supermarket this fine Saturday morning because although he went sans baby, he didn't have a list or the faintest idea what of what to buy for dinner and let's face it, men just don't multi-task like women do, especially when they are bombarded with such choice. It's been precisely an hour and I am still sitting in our car waiting for your father to return with the two meals I requested on top of a few essentials. In the meantime you've woken from your morning (and only day) nap a frustrating 30mins early and I can already feel my stress levels rising and your patience waning. I can just see your daddy pushing the trolley up each aisle to retrieve a single item and then getting to the checkout before realising he'd forgotten something - and forget he did. The main item in the dish he'd called (mid way though his meandering) to tell me he would make. Oh well, lesson learnt.
Even after arriving home I take on the tasks of feeding you lunch, cooking your dinner, throwing our lunch into the oven and entertaining you before your swimming class. When it's time to go your daddy asks me if I can change your nappy as well. I have to laugh inside because I know that if the roles were reversed he would never make swimming in time. That, my son, is multi-tasking. Half the time I don't even think your father realises. He comes home from work each day to find us happily playing in the bath with not an inkling of the madly intense hour that has preceded this. We do it all without much thought and my word am I getting better at it. I can now prepare and feed you dinner (often it's different from ours), cook mum and dad's dinner and bath you, all in the space of an hour so that when daddy gets home he gets to enjoy you.
That's life as we know it right now.
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