Surprise

There was a rare sighting at Costco tonight. A woman traveling alone(without her husband) was shopping with her two small children. She was wearing trendy jeans, an embroidered peasant top and carrying a cute purse. Her hair was pulled back and she was wearing diamond stud earrings. In short, she looked reasonably well put-together. That by itself wouldn't be surprising, but you don't often see moms shopping at Costco with their kids looking put-together, reasonably or otherwise. Then there were her kids. Their outfits matched(not coordinated, but respectively), they had shoes on, and they were sitting quietly in the front of her cart chatting peacefully. They were not whining. They were not demanding that their mother purchase this or that toy in bulk. They were not fighting with each other. The older boy was being gentle and patient with the younger boy, who was tickled pink to be sitting next to his big brother. Now for the really shocking part. The woman was me. Make no mistake, my kids have their fair share of tantrums, meltdowns, and scene-making, but generally they do it at home. I realize this is a gift, and I appreciate it. Deeply. My kids are the ones who make the other kids out in public look bad, the kids other moms at Costco look at with longing and think, "Why can't my kids behave like that? What does that mom know that I don't?" Frankly, I don't have a secret. Mostly I just got lucky. Generally I don't approve of comparison games, but I couldn't help myself tonight after witnessing some rather unlovely behavior in the dairy aisle and realizing that we'd been at Costco for some time and I had not had one bit of unpleasantness from the boys. Matteas did try climbing out of the cart once, but he was just being curious. He made the day of the lady standing in line behind us, flirting his heart out complete with cocking his head to the side and batting his big dark eyelashes. If he wasn't so young I'd swear he'd been trained to do it, but he was just born that way. I'm off to bathe and bed my well-behaved(in public) boys.