THAT mom

Today in the grocery store, I became "that" mom.  She is the mom that before I had children of my own I critcized fiercely.  She is the mom that you are sure you could easily parent better than and secretly wonder why God decided to grace her with children.  Do you know her?  Well, today she and I were the same.  With the older two in school, I decided to take a quick trip with just my 2 yr old to the grocery store.  He has recently decided that he really doesn't like sitting in the front part where he is supposed to sit and he insisted that he wanted to sit in the cart.  This morning he was so dang cute when he said please and I was so dang tired from him trying to take over my bed twice last night that I agreed.  He knows the rule, you have to stay on your bottom or you have to ride in the front with a seatbelt.  Starting out he did a FABULOUS job.  I didn't have to remind him at all.  I was starting to think that maybe he is getting big enough like his brothers to sit there with no problems, but I was wrong!  I reached for a box of cereal and as I did, he did the same and went tumbling head first out of the cart.  We were right up against the aisle so he hit the cereal lined shelf mostly and then I caught him right before he crashed into the floor.  Of course he is screaming, I'm comforting and three old people are GLARING at me.  Isn't it odd how you barely see anyone in the store until you have something happen that you wish no one had seen?  The old man next to me who had originally been talking to us, telling me how cute JJ is, now wouldn't say a word but instead just kept staring at me like, "How could you let that happen?  Why on earth wasn't he in the front where he belongs?"  And at the exact second that JJ fell, another older man walked into the aisle and and old woman stopped at the end of the aisle.  They all stared and you could almost hear their contempt for me as a mother.  I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide forever!  JJ is fine.  He has a bump on his forehead and one on the bridge of his nose, but otherwise unharmed and his normal happy 2 yr old self.  When I relayed the story to Hubby, he made me feel better in such a silly way.  He asked, "Did you say it was all old people giving you dirty looks?  I wish they would have said something so that you could have responded with, 'Hey, you let your kids ride around in the back of pickup trucks and didn't seem to think it was going to hurt them!' "  I laughed when he said it but it is true.  We didn't have carseats when we were kids, we didn't always wear seatbelts, we rode our bikes without helmets, ate butter, drank Kool-aid, and played tag in the street, and yet we all lived!  Yeah, probably shouldn't have let him sit in the back, not the safest thing I've done this week, but I did and he is ok now.  I think it scared me more than him and in all honesty, he is less traumatized by it all than I am!  And so, for those of you who would never dream of letting your child be that reckless, or for those of you who are now convinced that if you had kids, you would do a much better job of keeping them safe, I say this, I shouldn't have let him ride in the back, but it wasn't a mistake that God graced me with my children!  I'm not perfect, but I love my kids a whole lot even when I do dumb things like let a 2 yr old ride in the back of the cart.  :)