The Mommy Triathlon
If you are a mother of young
children, formal exercise is not something you have much time or desire to
do! As a substitute to going to the gym,
you should partake in a triathlon weekly.
Yes, you read correctly, a triathlon.
This Mommy Triathlon is also known by another name, grocery
shopping!
Phase one: corralling all the
kids, getting shoes and coats on, loading up in the car and unloading at the
grocery store. In this initial phase, it
is crucial to remember a few key planning aspects. Most importantly, make sure everyone has gone
potty before leaving the house. This is
critical when you reach phase two! On a
good day, completing this episode is relatively simple.
The beginning of stage two is
marked by entry into the grocery store.
The first task is cart acquisition and securing all your ‘helpers’ in
said cart. Usually at least one child is
crying at this point, but you must push on, you have a long way before this triathlon
is completed. Now, you probably wrote a detailed
shopping list that may or may not have actually made it into the store with
you. If, by some miracle, you have this
list in your hands, you might as well just throw it out now. Better yet, just hand it over to the
screaming child, she will end up with it soon enough. You are now ready to commence upon filling
your cart with all of your needed groceries.
Yeah right, you will now start filling your cart, but you will really
have no idea what you are actually buying.
Between breaking up fights, preventing little hands from swiping items
off the shelves, and attempting to lower the amount of noise pollution being emitted
from your cart, there really isn’t much time left to see what it is that is
filling up your cart. You will reach for
an item you need, get distracted by one or more of your helpers, and end up
with who knows what in your hand. But
you press on and continue this ludicrous system because is there not an
alternative. Once you have acquired all
of your needed food stuffs, the end of phase two is insight. All you have to do now is make it to the
checkout, unload the cart, prevent any small people from trying to add candy to
the belt, engage in the ever so fun “Why Mommy?” game answering about 300
questions in 3 minutes, pay for all the groceries and get everything and
everyone back to the car.
You will now be feeling pretty
good. All the kids and the groceries are
loaded in the car and you are heading home.
This feeling will be very short lived.
As stage three commences, the reality of the grueling final phase sets
in. You now have cranky and hungry
children who probably have to go to the bathroom again AND a trunk full of perishable
food. As you pull into the garage, your
mind is racing as to your next plan of action.
As you unload the kids, you are taking a mental inventory of the grocery
items that will spoil the fastest. Now
the race is on. You will learn just how
quickly you can grab bags out of the car and run them into the house. By the time you make it back in the door, the
smallest of your helpers, who has just learned to crawl, will be trying to make
her escape into the garage. Reset baby –
move her to the farthest corner of the family room and RUN back to the garage
to grab another armload of bags overflowing with random food. Yes, you will come running back in the door
just to be greeted again by your new little speed racer. Reset baby again, shoo other helpers out of
the bags already brought in and SPRINT back to the car. Repeat as many times as necessary until all
of the groceries are in the house. If it
hasn’t happened in the previous stages, this will be the point that sweating is
guaranteed. As you wipe your brow, you
see the end is in sight. At this point
you might be tempted to grab a random snack out of the bags to try to control
the wild hooligans who used to be your calm wonderful children…DO IT! This will buy you a good 4 minutes to be able
to throw items into the freezer and fridge.
Yes, items will be piled willy-nilly, but they will not spoil and all
will not be lost. Rejoice as you place
that final item in the pantry. You have
completed another Mommy Triathlon! If
all goes well, you won’t have to do this again until next week J
