Progress

Last week arriving at the mall, I zipped around the parking lot looking for a prime spot. Spying four prime spots one row over, I rounded the end and made straight for them, thrilled not to have to walk further in the heat. Only, too bad for me because the spots were reserved for "families with small children". Annoyed, yet also unable to be so because I advocated for the spots for pregnant women back in the day, I rounded the lot several more times until I finally gave up and walked the mile to the door in the stifling heat.

Today, while shopping with my cousin Jaimee I got a remembrance lesson in how difficult it is to shop with a toddler in tow. We set off with a happy toddler clutching his stuffed animal and an old phone discovered in the house, and a big smile on his face as he settled into his car seat to watch the video that popped up on the screen hanging from the ceiling of the van. Minutes before we arrived at our destination he was asleep.

Waking a sleeping toddler is equivalent to waking a sleeping tiger, yet there is no other alternative. It sucks for the parents and it sucks for the toddler, and it really sucks for the other shoppers, many who are there to escape their own whinny toddlers. Jaimee was unfazed by her sleeping child, insisted we would lay him down in the cart, and we stuck to our schedule.

We trolled the parking lot for a space close by because carrying a sleeping toddler in your arms is like carrying a hundred pound weight from the gym. They are nothing but lumpy sacks of dead weight that put pressure on legs, back, arms, and necks as you haul them from point A to point B. Luckily, nowadays parents don't have to add that stress to their body parts since they have the above mentioned designated parking spots.

Back in the old days, twenty years ago, the genius that came up with the idea hadn't opened her big mouth (I put her because, surely, this was a mother) yet and so we struggled with sleeping toddlers, babies in carriers, walking toddlers who refused to hold hands, and our own bodies loaded down with a gigantic diaper bag that housed everything but the kitchen sink. Times were tough back then, but this, this invention, this simple act is pure wonder. Spots close to the door to rally the groups quickly into the store from the car and vice versa.

Of course, the spots were taken, but we landed one next to this spot and so we considered that a win, and Jaimee lugged the sleeping child out of the car seat, cradled him as he tried to decide whether to keep sleeping or to wake and observe, and we were in the store in seconds and he was in the cart on top of a pillow we had brought as our color swatch before he could make up his mind which way to go.

Progress. Almost makes me wish I could start over. Although, after three days with Jaimee's ten four children I've decided visiting and/or grandparenting is the new way to start over.