Warning! Don’t take small children shopping!

You know that feeling don’t you? When in your head, you have a cunning plan and you envisage an outing or an event where everything is lovely and everyone is happy. Then the soft focus and gentle music stop and the reality is far from the lovely picture you had in your head.  I don’t know about you, but this seems to happen to me a lot.

This morning was one such outing. Thursday’s, I look after my friends daughter all day along with my own daughter. My daughter is two and my friends daughter is four. Apart from the odd spat about sharing, the two girls do get on fairly well.

The weather has been a bit rubbish the last few weeks and A has been poorly a lot, so the last few Thursdays have been stay at home days, so today I had this mad plan of going to Cheltenham to do some shopping.   Cheltenham is about thirty minutes away from home by car, so as long as the girls didn’t fall asleep …

Yes, I realise that with two small children this was not going to be easy, but how bad could it be?

After about ten mad dashes to the toilet; one which was in the cafe and even though I ran my drink had been cleared away when I got back, several strops from my daughter, a number of inane comments from passers by, A trying to decapitate people with her new umbrella, THE biggest tantrum trying to remove my daughter from ELC on one of our ‘desperate’ trips to the toilet, trying to explain to my friend’s daughter why I couldn’t buy her the whole Disney store and trying in vain to stop the girls falling asleep on the way home, I made the decision that I would not be repeating the experience in a hurry.

So after today’s experiences, here is my guide to planning outings with small children.

1. Put all children , whatever their age in nappies. That way you don’t have to run ninety miles an hour to find a toilet as of course when small children finally do tell you that they need a wee, they really do and you need to be an Olympic runner to get there in time.

2. Don’t ever go into a toy shop. Firstly both children go in opposite directions, pull random things off the shelves and throw them on the floor like they’re at home and then you have double the tantrums when you want to leave and they don’t, even if one of them is crossing their legs. Then there is the number of times that you have to tell them repeatedly that you are just looking and NOT buying anything today.

3. If you are brave enough to take the children to a cafe, have a sign in your bag to put on the table in case you have to do a toilet dash that tells the cafe staff politely not to take your much deserved hot drink away as you are only popping to the toilet and really will be back to finish it.  Actuall scrap that, just don’t think you will get away with a hot drink, I mean you never get one at home, so why would you at a cafe?

4. If you buy a snack in the cafe make sure that you and both children all have the same thing as it doesn’t matter how many times you ask them if they’re sure that they want something different, you can guarantee that when you have queued, paid and sat down one of the children will suddenly change their mind and you end up giving them you’re snack to appease them.

5. Put a sign on your person telling everyone that the two children are not both yours, not the same age, yes they are a bit of a handful and that yes the ‘ginger’ one (not mine) is very pretty.

6. If you don’t want children to sleep in the car, don’t go any further than five minutes away from the house. Driving a car whilst trying to tickle a two year old in the back to stop her from going to sleep, is extremely dangerous and I dot recommend it.

7. Do not buy a two year old an umbrella . Not ever!

8. Sod it! You really don’t need to go anywhere do you. Stay at home, play games, watch television. It’s safer, less stressful and much more enjoyable.