Twin Day at Stater Bros.

Yesterday's shopping trip was a fiasco. Instead of merrily driving along, spinning their respective steering wheels, they each fought for control of the other steering wheel. Much screaming and hair-pulling ensued. Which made me want to do some screaming of my own, and pull my own hair out. Instead, I let Nathan get out and walk, and spent the shopping trip preventing him from smashing the cart into a display of olives while I filled my baggie with baby carrots. And picking up jars of olives, because I was just a few seconds too late to stop him. Oh yes, and having my parenting criticized by total strangers. That's always fun. All in all, an unmitigated disaster.

Well, not quite unmitigated. I did get the weeks groceries.... although by the time I got all three screaming kids into the apartment and settled down, the frozen goods had melted...

And I met some fun people. In the meat department, a woman and her 9 year-old daughter stopped to admire my wuggies. Turns out, she has 15-year old twin boys at home, and she glowingly told me how fabulous it is to have twin boys and a little sister for them. "But when they get to this age..."

She glanced over at her daughter, and I cringed. Why, oh why, do people feel like it's okay to tell the world awful their children are, when they're standing right there?

"...they're so much fun!"

The little girl beamed with pride, and danced around giggling, "I'm so much fun!" while her mother and I congratulated one another on having such delightful families.

You'd think that'd be twins enough for one shopping trip, but in the check-out line, there were more. The woman ahead of me let me go first, since her husband had run to grab some formula. She asked how old my baby was, and said that hers was about the same age--but much smaller. Her husband returned while I was checking out, looked at the twins, and said, "Nathan and Nicholas!"

Considerably wierded out, I corrected him. "No, Nathan and Isaiah, actually."

Well, it turns out that I have a two month old. They also have two month olds--- twins named Nathan and Nicholas. And of course I have twins as well--Nathan and Isaiah.

At this point the elderly gentleman in the next lane over chimed in to tell us about his twins, Nicholas and Natalie.

Hmmm... I wonder if the Stater Brothers were twins, too?