Kindness: Part 5

I realize that most of my posts about kindness involve grocery shopping.  Perhaps something about the brightly lighted displays and fresh flowers of a grocery store puts people in a cheerful, cooperative, and helpful mood.  Or maybe it's just that most of my interaction with the outside world happens at grocery stores.  Also, it is likely that a grocery shopping trip is the time when a very pregnant mother of two young children appears to need the most help.  But, whatever the reason, I find people to be very kind when I am grocery shopping.

This week I had a very short shopping list, so we made it through the store pretty quickly.  The store wasn't very busy, but there was only one cashier, so the line was quite long.  When it was our turn to check out, my three year old decided to help load the groceries onto the conveyor belt.  He grabbed a gallon of milk and dropped it.  The carton broke and milk exploded everywhere.  Everyone had to move out of line so that the mess could be cleaned up.  After the milk had been mopped the cashier rang up my groceries.  Just as she announced my total someone pushed his way to the front of the line and said, "Wait, I got you another gallon of milk."  He had been behind me in line, and when he saw the mess he ran to the back of the store to replace the exploded gallon.

On an unrelated note, we have survived our first potty training experience at our house.  Survive is too dramatic a word.  The whole process was remarkably uneventful.  It did prompt some rather hilarious conversations about anatomy.  But I try to remember that someday my children will grow up and be old enough to be embarrassed.  So, while they are fabulous stories that would make you laugh, I have decided that they probably ought not be broadcast in an online venue.  Just know that life has been pretty funny around here lately.

Kindness: Parts Previous

Treasure Hunt

My kids love watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  The show isn't exactly a pinnacle of achievement in children's television, but their are worse options.  Actually, despite my goal to turn my children into nerds, I've decided that I'm opposed to educational TV programming.  But that is a topic for another day.  We stumbled across Jake on Netflix, and a few weeks ago when I had the flu I let him and his "merry crew of Neverland pirates" babysit my kids.  It is almost disturbing how much of the show they can quote.  They really don't get to watch it that often, but my little boy can pretty much quote verbatim every episode he has seen.  His little sister can't recreate the episodes, but she knows all of the tag lines.  She likes to say "Aw coconuts," and tries to count gold doubloons.  I'm pretty sure that the other day she was saying "Jolly Roger," but her speech isn't always completely clear, so I could be wrong.

This weekend we made an awesome hot wheels track in the kitchen.  It started on the refrigerator, went over the counters, and crossed a few chairs.  Due to my lack of foresight, the track ended on the floor right in front of the stove.  It took a while to set up, and the kids were so excited.  I even tried to heighten the suspense by making them pick the perfect car for the inaugural run and count backwards from 10 before letting it go.  They were delighted and thrilled for about 30 seconds.  Then the car reached the end of the track and kept rolling right under the stove.  I think they both wondered why I had made them work so hard to lose their favorite car.

It was a disaster until I remembered that they love the Neverland pirates.  I told them we were going on a treasure hunt to find their car.  We tried several methods of extraction, but finally I gave up and just moved the stove.  My little girl exclaimed "treasure!" and picked up an entirely different car.  The kids also found a purple spoon, a yellow magnet, tons of cereal, and the car we were originally looking for.  Now they want to know if they can go on a treasure hunt under the dishwasher.