Oh little girls are such a joy. Really, they are! However, sometimes my child exhibits some "boy" traits that catch me off guard and sometimes even delight me.
Lauren and I popped into the grocery store this morning to buy one thing. A gallon of milk. We trek to the back of the store to get the milk and Lauren insists on carrying it to the front of the store. I tell her that it's extremely heavy and would probably be pretty tricky. I should mention here that in our family, we try not to say the word "hard" but use "tricky" instead. She says, "I can do it Mom!" I throw caution to the wind and hand the
uber heavy gallon of milk over to her. She takes the milk with a loud grunt and tries to get a good grip on it while shifting it around between her wee hands. I suddenly have a Mom Memory of another mom friend telling a tale of "...one time he threw a gallon of milk out of the grocery cart and it busted and spewed milk everywhere..." My MOM ALARM starts sounding, "WARNING! WARNING! POTENTIAL MILK CATASTROPHE! TAKE THE MILK BACK! FOR GOD'S SAKE WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?" So I gently take the milk back and we head to the front of the store to pay.
All the way up to the front of the store, Lauren is telling me how strong she is and that carrying the milk for me would be no problem.
We pay. We proceed to bag up the milk (self-checkout of course!) and start to leave the store. Lauren again insists she can carry the milk. I double bag it and say, "OK, give it a try..."
She struggles. She grunts. She's determined. The self-checkout attendant smiles and stifles her laughter as Lauren goes struggling towards the door.
Lauren tries sliding the loops of the plastic grocery bag up over her wrist. We've all tried this. It results in immediate sensation loss to your hand. She figures this out quickly and tries holding the loops with both hands but the milk is clunking into her thighs and knees. She stops and tries heaving the bag up onto her shoulder, like a purse. Again, immediate sensation loss to not just her hand this time, but her entire arm.
While I'm watching all this and trying to coax her across the parking lot, I keep saying, "Hey, do you need some help? Why don't you let Mom carry it the rest of the way...?" To which she keeps saying, in a winded voice, "No...Mom...*grunt*...I'm strong...*grunt*...I can do it...*grunt*"
And sure enough, she did. She IS strong.
Thanks to the nice camera on my new phone I was able to capture this Herculean moment.
She's saying through labored breathing, "Mom...I think I see the car..." as if it's miles away, when in reality it was only two more cars down from where she was standing.
Taking a little breathing break. But almost there!
Final HEAVE! HO! into the car.
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