My 6-year-old daughter was pestering me to go shopping last night. I said, “no” in as upbeat a tone as I could over and over and over again. When we got to the bottom of it, she wanted to buy fruit gummie gushers for her friend and herself. He had been asking her to be sure to pick some up next time she went shopping with me.
He claimed his mother didn't know where the grocery store is that we bought them from (a major grocery store in our area). The truth is that his mother really sticks to buying organic food most of the time and wouldn't buy these gummie gushers; we are a little more lenient in letting my daughter explore some different foods once in a while. She then told me that if I didn't get her friend some of these right away, he was going to cry.
I said that would be a good thing. She said no – his breath is terrible when he cries and he will cry right in my face. I laughed and laughed and then she started to breathe in my face. I resisted and fought her hard – while we both laughed for a long time. Then she drank milk and breathed milk breath on my face and I fended her off even more from the terrible smell of cow breath.
After fighting off her milk breath for a while, she proceeded to tell me that when I cry my tears smell like poop. I was horrified to hear this and the two of us immediately composed an apology note to my regular listening partner (who she also knows and loves) that for all these years she has had to put up with my tears that smell like poop. It was a magnificent card that will go in the mail today. We then spent the rest of the evening taking a long bath and reading.
What a better way to spend time with my daughter than going shopping.
—a mother in Falmouth, Maine