Then There are the Days When You Hear Your Name over the Intercom at the Grocery

It wasn't bad enough that only months ago did I suffer the embarrassment of my child pooping behind a bush on a playground, now I am gunning for 2011 Mother of the Year award only 6 days into the new year.

YES, I fully admit that I was part of this preventable and also scary situation.

In all my days growing up never did my mom make the walk of shame to the store manager's office to come fetch me because I had wandered away.

We have 3 rules when Ben goes to the grocery

1. You must either ride fireman style on the cart or have your own little cart. No riding under the cart, in the basket, or running down the aisles.

2. If you are well behaved you can have a KK sprinkle doughnut as the FINAL THING WE DO

3. You can pick 4 things but they must be able to be served at dinner (aka no candy, gummis, toys)

Enter yesterday when Ian decided that napping was for the weak and finally passed out a hour before daycare pickup. Since he had gotten up around 6am I thought I'd push out going to the store until later. Bad decision.

Ben was whiny, argumentative, basically a pint-sized tool. Needless to say he had lost the doughnut. Just as we were heading out a parent of a former student stopped me to ask if I had left teaching. I motioned to Ian and was relaying that I was taking a year leave off when I heard my name over the grocery loudspeaker.

Actually, it was "is there a Heather in the store?" Ben knows his last name, but I don't think he realizes it's my name too. I guess I'm just lucky they didn't put out the all call for "mommy" over the loudspeaker. I hightailed it to the front of the store to see him sitting in the managers office, looking very, very small and sad.

According to the cashier he was looking at a car magazine sitting on the floor in the check our lane when she realized I was not with him. Part of me freaked out that he so willingly went with her to find me, or that in a matter of secs he was out of my sight and could have been out of the store.

Needless to say I should have had a better eye on him and not been distracted. We had a seriously Come to Jesus meeting about stranger danger, what to do when he gets lost in a store, and most importantly not to wander off as really bad things can happen, like he could DIE.

The night ended on a much better note. Among our new library books I found a book of animal knock knock jokes. Ben had never heard of them!?! I had so much fun teaching him the most basic level jokes and listening to him double over laughing at the lamest jokes ever.