shopping, singing, cajoling, shopping

I find it somewhat fascinating how many moms will apologize to me for their children's behavior. I'm always quick to point out that, first of all -- and most importantly -- some of the best images are Kids Not Behaving!! And, secondly, I am in no position to accept such an apology. As a mom myself, I am actually in the final stage of trying to let go of the apology thing, at least when there are no major offenses committed. Especially when in The Store, I feel there is only so much I can control - so when we do shop together, I have adopted the habit of evaluating all requests and giving more weight to the better presentations. Both kids are getting really good at their requests, even in light of a less than 1% success rate. Luckily, neither one has studied complex graphing in school yet, so they are still putting great creativity into their proposals. I also allow all public singing up to a level 5 (out of 10, fair enough for a major shopping area, I think?), and my children usually hang off the edge of the cart while belting out tunes that often aren't: a. in harmony or b. the same song/beat/rhythm. A recent outing...my sweet daughter expressing great emotion over a High School Musical backpack.

Our little Caleb, always one to pick up on a good trend, making his case for Lightning McQueen sneakers, which I'm embarrassed to say that we totally bought for him. (small postscript. we lost the left shoe within 8 hours of purchase.)

Neither of these carts were ours.

And the infamous cart singing. It happens a lot.