In the Club

Ellie is enjoying an easy rotation this week. When I say “easy” I mean I can do it, despite the fact that I have only slightly more medical training than any of our children individually, though combined they could have more than me. She goes in early in the morning, engages herself in the morning meeting for a solid hour, goes to the radiology department, answers a few questions, and goes home. The only part of that I couldn’t do is answer the questions, although the morning meeting can be brutal from what I’ve heard. She works harder in the afternoons and evenings, but this week her mornings are mostly free. We took advantage of this free time this morning to journey to our nearby warehouse club for great bargains on large packages of diapers and 64-ounce bottles of barbecue sauce.

We left as a family, something I’m growing more comfortable about doing. A few weeks ago, I would have left the twins at home at all times, terrified that strangers would inflict horrifying germs on the twins, and horrified that the twins would inflict terrifying screams on strangers. Now that we’ve got them on something approaching a predictable schedule, I’m more confident that we can keep them calm outside the house. As for the germs, they may still catch something, but since they’re under the influence of multiple vaccines and shots, anything they catch will probably only threaten my sanity.

Once we reached the store, I threw Abbie in the cart while Ellie trailed pushing the twins in their double stroller, which was a great gift by the way. As we trekked about the store, I quickly realized how complicated my life has become. In a normal store, I can look for laundry detergent while Ellie looks for fabric softener, and look behind me to know that Ellie is still right with me. In the warehouse store, the two related items are separated by half-a-football-field worth of wide empty aisles and palettes of garlic powder packaged by the pound stacked to the ceiling, meaning we have to stare across a mighty chasm to spot the other. If only one of us had a child, the free one could run ahead, pick out the proper softener, and lug it back to the cart before it could wander too far. With children, we run nowhere and move deliberately everywhere, which means there is no running ahead, and I’d better make darn sure that Ellie is right behind me before I move because there’s no way I’m redirecting my cart’s momentum unnecessarily after it’s been weighed down by six pounds of body wash.

The children behaved remarkably well in the store. Despite having removed every interesting toy from her diaper bag before we left without my knowledge, Abbie was calm most of the time in the cart, and the store thoughtfully supplied us with food samples when she began fussing. No toy can calm a fussy toddler as well as a sample of double-chocolate cheesecake, and those little cups make a perfect toddler serving size. The twins slept the entire time, which not only made traversing the store a quieter chore, it also discouraged interested onlookers from touching the twins because most people have enough sense to not wake a sleeping baby. Not that I’m forbidding people from touching our twins, but I do want to limit germ transference and keep my sanity.