Toddler plus Shopping Trip equals Aaaarrrgggh!

Remember your life. Back before you had kids. You’d wander idly around shopping centres, slowly looking through rails of clothes. You’d enjoy a leisurely lunch and a nice coffee whilst reading a pretty glossy magazine.

You’d curse parents unable to ‘discipline’ their obnoxious screaming offspring, muttering under your breath when they rammed their cumbersome buggies into your legs and zigzagged aimlessly around the shops.

You’d swear that if you had children you would never let them behave so badly in public. You would never appease their tantrumy ways with chocolate and promises of rides on hideously expensive and gaudy looking rides. You would never ever be so rude as to ram someones ankles with your buggy.

Then you have children.

Shopping trips become like entering the 7th circle of hell. Your child was made to tantrum, mostly in public at 300 decibels. Their flailing arms and kicking legs cause random buggy swerving and occasional pedestrian injury.

Leisurely lunches become a thing of the past. Instead lunch is a military manoeuvre which involves chasing your toddler around with crayons in an effort to persuade them to sit and eat. Any hot drink will eventually be only half consumed and, most probably, will have gone cold.

When a toddler is in ‘the zone’ nothing can avert their focus other than the promise of chocolate and a ride on Iggle Piggle’s Boat. Any flouting of these rules will result in further blood curdling screams and the disdainful stares of other shoppers accompanied by much tutting and muttering.

You become a falsely grinning, sweaty, manic, disheveled, nervous wreck.

Just me? Hmmmm.

Did I mention I love shopping………online.