The Truth....

is so hard to come by sometimes.We all put a positive spin on ourselves and our lives and why not? Appreciating ourselves and dwelling on the beautiful brings enjoyment to our lives. But sometimes, its nice to acknowledge the chaos and swallow a healthy dose of realism. Especially when it comes to parenting which is often only considered through rose-coloured glasses.

When I came across this article, I instantly loved the honesty in these photos. Your usual family photos are beautiful of course, but there's something to be said for revealing the far more common moments when life is anything but perfect.

I feel I can relate to the above photo best but if I were to get one of these done, I would definitely be in a grocery store with the shopping cart toppled over onto my children...sigh. Here is the link to the article on Danielle Guenther's amazingly original work.

Do You Have A Shopping Cart?

My youngest daughter, G, likes to sing made up songs. One of the cutest is the one titled "do you have a shopping cart?" I usually use one when I do grocery shopping with my girls. I find it makes the task easier, corrals them in one place, so to speak, if we could imagine two children as a herd of horses (not that hard really). However, on one recent occasion, the shopping cart was not enough to save me from the ORDEAL THAT IS SHOPPING WITH CHILDREN.

My first mistake might have been NOT promising candy as a bribe for good behaviour in the store. What was I thinking? Well, I guess I was thinking of my children's health, but I only needed about 10 items, so I thought nothing could really go wrong.

My second mistake was using the self-serve checkout. Now, I'm usually a pro at them and zip through in no time, but on this day I had decided to use my own bags, which I rarely do when I'm self-checkouting. All the other lines were long and I was desperate to finish the task since the two monkeys in my shopping cart were getting scrappy.

G was sitting in the child seat, R was hanging off the side. I was madly trying to self-check out items and get the machine to cooperate with my cloth bags. Scrappy monkey R, probably bored, was poking G for entertainment, who responded with swats and pushes. While my back was turned toward the machine, I could hear that things were starting to get pretty rough, so I turned around.

I was just in time to watch the whole shopping cart fall right over. That's right. With my child hanging on to the side. With my youngest strapped in the seat. With the shopping cart landing right on top of my horrified oldest child.

I do not recall what it was exactly that I yelled out, but it was something along the lines of "OH MY GOD!" Both children were crying very hard. EVERYONE was staring. By some miracle, neither of them was really hurt. A kind grocery store employee let me sit on a bench and sooth them while she rang the rest of the purchases through. Where would I be without the kindness of strangers? Probably a crazy woman pushing a shopping cart. Oh wait....