is my face red?

I'm not the type of person that gets embarrassed easily. It could be that I'm usually careful about what I say and I'm not too impulsive, so I leave little opportunity for embarrassment. Or it's because I come from a weird family (weird in a good way!), so I'm beyond embarrassment. And amazingly, since having kids, I've never been embarrassed by things they have said or done...until recently.

This morning we had to go to the scout office and to the grocery store. While at the scout office I put Tyler in the stroller so that he wouldn't run wild, and I let Alexis push him. As I'm looking at stuff I realize Tyler's got his hands in all the little bins because Alexis let him out of the stroller, because she's the boss, you know. You can imagine his reaction when I put him back in the stroller--he was screaming--and Alexis also started crying because I wouldn't let her push the stroller after that. Finally after a few minutes of crying she decides to pull snacks out of my purse and give them to Tyler. I had to take those away because I didn't want him to have snacks at the time, so you know what that made him do. SCREAM SOME MORE! At this point I was thoroughly embarrassed, partly because of their screaming but mostly because of my behavior. I've had kids scream in the store before and it usually doesn't phase me, I could keep my cool. But today I was TIRED. And I was IMPATIENT. And I was FRUSTRATED with the constant POWER STRUGGLE that is Alexis. As a result I'm sure I looked like the meanest mom in all the scouting world, and I felt like it. Even more, when we got in the car I chewed them out like I never have before. I almost feel bad about it, but my kids are generally better behaved that that--there's no reason why they should have been acting that way. I would expect that if all I did was make them sit in strollers and carts, but they get PLENTY of play time, and they needed to know that how they acted was inappropriate. After my "lecturing" I had complete silence in the car for 4 (four!) whole minutes. Then we passed a fountain and it was back to "water, mommy. truck, mommy. tree, mommy", which is better than tears.

So ridiculously enough, because of their now cheery moods I developed a little hope that the grocery store might not be as terrible, that maybe nothing embarrassing would be said or done. After all, this time they would have snacks and get to sit in the fun cart! But before we even had an item in our cart we passed a 40-something lady in a wheelchair and all Alexis says to her is "Are you old?". And then Tyler spent the rest of the time trying to climb out, or throwing his body all over Alexis so that she was squished. I'm not sure that it was worse than the previous place, but it was pretty close.

So if anyone is looking for me, I'll be under that rock over there. I probably won't come out until my kids are at least in their 20's--I don't think it's safe before then.