Every once in awhile Mr. Spreadsheets gets a glimpse into daily life with three kids and it just makes me laugh.

Before you start thinking he’s an absentee father, let me reassure you that he is not, but he does have a full time job. He leaves early early in the morning and gets home around dinnertime. Luckily he gets to see the worst of all of us every day.

But he misses out on a lot of the joys of three kids 8 and under, things like taking three kids to the store and attempting to buy ALL (not just some) of the items on the list.

As a side note, this is why I get annoyed when we run out of something early. Running out of milk before my next planned grocery run means I have to psych myself up to either move the grocery trip up a few days or take all three kids for one item… both options are almost as lovely as getting root canal.

On Saturday we attempted to brave Costco as a family… around noon. Good timing I know, but we’d just come from peach picking and we had to pick up a few items for school  including AsthmaMan’s inhaler. I figured the kids were FULL of fresh peach ice cream so theoretically they had the strength to make it through the store.

We pulled into the parking lot and things started to go downhill.

I need to back up a few steps and say we had an AWFUL week with AsthmaMan, possibly the worst week yet and that’s saying something. This kid has never met a rule worth following so he’s a wee bit of a challenge. Add to that his temper which can go 0-5000 in 2 seconds and you have a recipe for disaster.

On Wednesday he had a meltdown at Sam’s Club because I wouldn’t let him hide under the clothing tables. He was screaming (SCREAMING), hitting me, punching me, and of course accusing me of hurting him. Luckily the store wasn’t busy so EVERYONE heard him. It was beautiful. It took some kind lady showing him pictures of her many dogs to chill him out long enough to safely leave the store. For the record I wasn’t hurting him but I was tempted to leave him at the store and have Brian pick him up later (I did NOT do this).

Oh and then Friday after coming home from the pool he ripped off one of our pantry doors because I wouldn’t let him have a snack (dinner was on the table waiting for him to walk the 4 feet to eat it) or go get him dry clothes (because he’s 5 and can handle that). Just ripped it off. Granted I don’t like the pantry doors and I do agree a remodel is in order, but seriously, he just ripped the door off.

And I forgot to mention the time earlier in the week when he threatened to run away and we couldn’t find him. We did eventually find him asleep in bed, but that’s not the point.

It was a long week, one where I was super glad kindergarten is just around the corner. So when he refused to get out of the car at Costco I knew we were in for a treat. We finally pulled him out of the car (literally pulled him) and got him into the store.  I convinced him that the inhaler was a must and that he could not start kindergarten without it (which is partly true, he does have to have a new inhaler sitting in the nurses office along with his asthma action plan, but I bet they would let him go the first day even if I forgot to drop it off).

Since he really wants to start school he agreed to come with me to the pharmacy, but once we picked up the inhaler he was pretty much done.

I reminded him that he was the one that wanted pizza pockets for school lunches and if he wanted them then we needed to head on over to the frozen section. We’d already gone 10 rounds over these stupid pizza pockets. AsthmaMan is an incredibly picky eater, these were the one food he’d agreed to take to school lunch so we went to get the exact ones that he had agreed to eat.

Anyway we were walking through the busy store with our three kids. I think that’t enough said, but I’ll elaborate a bit further. It was Costco on a Saturday the week that school starts so business was booming. AsthmaMan insisted on jerking the cart backwards and forwards as we walked down the center aisle, he was being annoying but not screaming so it was actually quite pleasant. But then he got bored and started poking his sister who started to scream cry (yep it’s a thing). And then his older brother decided to discipline him which he obviously loved.

We weren’t even the the produce section and things were going nowhere fast.

Mr. Spreadsheets was visibly annoyed with the situation and decided the he needed to have a chat with AsthmaMan.

They chatted, neither of them enjoyed the talk, the behavior did not improve, but we finished our list and left.

By the time we got to the car Mr. Spreadsheet’s said something to the effect of “that was AWFUL! What is wrong with our  kids?!”

And I… had to laugh. Given the week we’d had, I thought things went rather well. We’d gotten all the things on our list and there was very limited hitting, running away, or scream crying.

But I also had to think to myself, “Sharing is caring man, I’m so glad you got to enjoy a small piece of my summer life.” I mean yeah it would have been great if they’d all acted their ages, but it was kinda great for Mr. Spreadsheets to see that I’m not exaggerating about their out of control behavior.

I have to say that when school starts Thursday there is not going to be even a little piece of me that misses taking three kids to the grocery store to buy one item (or 50 items). Yes, I’ll miss having the boys around but won’t it be lovely to go somewhere and not have to say “stop it!”, “get off the floor!”, “do NOT run away!”

In the meantime sharing is caring, I might not be able to fix my kids’ behavior, but I can share the experience of parenting wild people in public with Mr. Spreadsheets- though something tells me the wild people tend to save their best tricks for when he’s at work or better yet out of town on business.