Mondays are my “Abby + Me” days, where I don’t work and she and I do whatever. I would like to say we play lots of games and do arts + crafts and it’s nothing but play dates and swing sets, but no. We usually do laundry!! and go grocery shopping!! (I add the exclamation marks because whenever I talk about doing these things with Abby, I act SUPER excited and make the oh-face (not THAT one, perv) with my eyebrows raised and gasp for joy. So now, when I mention them, SHE makes the oh-face and gasps for joy. As if they’re the greatest activities ON EARTH. She’s smart most of the time, people.)

Anyway, yesterday was no exception. We went and visited the hubs at his work so his coworkers could see that he actually DID have a child 18 months ago and those weren’t just pictures of someone else’s kid. Then we hopped back in the car and drove to the grocery store.

In the beginning it was uneventful, and quite like the normal trip to the grocery store; Abby wanting to hold everything and me attempting to keep things like bread and eggs out of her hands. I grabbed a jar of peanut butter which she immediately wanted to hold. I hand it to her – what could she possibly do? It’s plastic. She got her little hands on that jar and started pounding it on the cart, only to have it rebound up and hit her in the forehead.

Cue the red-faced silent cry that can only give way to the GIGANTIC-EXHALE-SCREAM-CRY.

I quickly calmed her and stuffed her binkie in her mouth and left that aisle as quickly as possible since everyone seemingly assumed I had just cattle-branded my daughter. (At least that’s what I would have assumed.) Little did I know that this small chain of events was enough to convert this normal trip to the grocery store to the GROCERY STORE TRIP FROM HELL. We went from zero to Damien in like, 30 seconds.

I grabbed the next item on the list, mandarin orange cups, which OF COURSE she wanted to hold. Only, I didn’t know she’d changed over into Satan spawn and as soon as I handed them to her she threw them on the floor, breaking the packaging and busting open two of the fruit cups. I whispered a quick “ABIGAIL!” under my breath and ran the leaking package back down the aisle to get a new one, when I hear the following:

“WHOSE BABY IS THIS? WHO LEAVES A CHILD UNATTENDED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE?!”

(For the record, I was about 15 feet from the fruit cups. And JUST LEFT HER SIDE. And she wasn’t in the middle of the aisle. She was in the cart off to the side but far enough away so she couldn’t start tearing things off the shelf.)

I turn around and see some old bag with a cart full of rotisserie chicken and prune juice pointing at my kid and yelling in the middle of the grocery store. I grabbed a new package of mandarin oranges and walked back to my cart, glaring at the old woman. She said (loudly) “The nerve of some parents!” and then started shuffling away. So, now I have devil child giving me shit, and some random geriatric practically calling social services.

After this I try buying some meat products, Abby screams because I won’t let her hold them, and then the spitting starts. (When she’s mad, she’ll purse her lips and expel a bunch of spit, which just drips down her chin and on her clothes. Again, DAMIEN.) I mutter, “You are SO going into time-out when we get home.” In hindsight, I can see how my increasing anxiety and crabbiness only made the situation worse, but I really don’t see how I could have remembered that when in reality I could have used an exorcist for my child.

I DID remember though that this kid effing LOVES balloons. So I figure I’ll go borrow one from the floral department to keep her distracted for the rest of the trip. They didn’t have your standard mylar balloons on strings, only the miniature ones on a plastic stick. FINE. They had a Belle “princess” one – SCORE. Abby couldn’t have been more elated. She started rubbing it on her head and was happy as a clam.

I make it through the rest of the store without issue for the most part. I get to the second to last aisle, only water jugs and a 12-pack of Coke to go, and the worst thing in the history of grocery trips happens.

The balloon pops.

Abby looks at me yelling “BUUUUT! Mama! Broke! BUUUT!” (buuuut is how she says balloon), while shoving the quickly deflating balloon in my face. I look at her calmly and say “It’s broken, honey. Mama can’t fix it. It’s still pretty though!” And then Damien throws it in my face and hits me. I start muttering “serenity now” over and over again, grab my final items and think to myself I just have to check out and this will be over. Ten more minutes and this will be over.

I turn the corner to get into a checkout line and see four lanes open and they’re all about six people deep.

I bite my lip to avoid my own personal meltdown and get in line. Abby starts yelling “MAMA! UP! MAMA! WALK! DOWN! MAMA!” because she ‘s sick of being in the cart and probably wants someone else for a mom at this point. To avoid putting on another performance of the Abby Show, I let her down but ask her to hold my hand, which she does for a whopping 3 seconds before she takes off. I run after her, pick her up and bring her to the cart and she bites me. This is when the tears start welling up in my eyes because now I probably have the devil venom she so clearly is the carrier of. Also my child just bit me in front of the whole grocery store.

We finally get to the front of the line where I unload my groceries on the conveyor belt and hand the clerk the deflated and now totally mangled balloon. He says “Oh dear, what happened here?” and I tell him that my child destroyed it, but I’m glad to pay him for it. He gets all kind and says that’s not necessary, to which I reply “I will gladly pay for that thing, because the 20 minutes of silence it bought me was priceless.”  I hand Abby the reciept for the groceries to keep her occupied (which she promptly threw on the floor) and we left the grocery store.

Serenity now.

**Disclaimer: My daughter is more times than not totally awesome and sweet and the greatest kid on the planet. I write this more so as a demonstration that the “Terrible Two’s” is SUCH AN EFFING LIE.

**She was back to her sweet self today.