MOVarazzi

Thursday, April 25, 2013

946. V Is for (Punchline)

Having two little boys means that they must accompany you on errands from time to time or you will remain on permanent house arrest for several years.  When I had my first baby, I tentatively dragged him to the grocery store or Target every few weeks; when I had my second son, I felt comfortable enough to take both kids to the vet or the bank or dry cleaner daily if need be.  It was all a matter of choosing a time of day when everyone was rested and well-fed. 

So I thought nothing of taking my adorable son Tall (age 3 and a half at the time) and his one-year-old baby brother to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things. 
We had made our serpentine way around the aisles, picking up such essentials as bread, milk, juice, and frozen chicken nuggets.  I casually threw some chocolate cookies into the cart when the children were momentarily distracted by the guy giving out fajita samples. 

And then it happened. 
We turned a corner, heading to the check-out area, and Tall tugged excitedly on my sleeve, indicating something momentous. 

“Mommy, look!” he proclaimed, pointing.  “Over there, look! 
I was expecting to see Big Bird or Godzilla or at the very least, a cantaloupe display that had tipped over and blocked the ice-cream aisle.  Instead, he was pointing to a section of the store that I was already intimately familiar with. 

“Vino, Mommy!  Vino!  Your favorite!”  Now he was yelling, in his sweet little preschooler “outside” voice, a voice that was suddenly attracting a lot of unwanted attention from Trader Joe employees and other customers.  Anyone within a one-mile radius was craning their neck to look over at the mommy who clearly was a lush.    
I kept walking, feeling my face turn 100 shades of Valentine red, trying to ignore my son and silently pretending that he had just followed me in here and I had never met him before.  Tall was oblivious to my reaction, so he continued with his “helpfulness.”  He was quite exasperated with me at this point. 

“Mommy!  Mommy!  Don’t forget your vino!”  

At this point I realized that the only way to get him to stop screaming out was to put a bottle or five of vino into the cart.  He smiled, proud of himself for assisting his mommy in remembering something so crucial to her everyday existence.   
So, yes, the letter V is for … vino. 

MOV
("Mistress Of Vino")

8 comments:

  1. Oh bless his sweet little heart! He just wanted to be helpful to his mommy. What a funny story! Glad you survived to shop another day. :-)

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  2. My baby is 9 weeks old and I haven't had the nerve to take him out with me yet. How do you manage it? I have to wait until someone can watch him and then, yes, I feel like I'm on house arrest. The problem is that I can carry and hold my son, but the infant car seat carrier is unbelievably heavy already without adding a 12 pound baby into it!

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  3. Why is it the only thing they remember at that crucial learning phase is how mommy is a wino. My son did a report on it.

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  4. I will now forever assume that that is the real extrapolation of MOV. And that you set your son up for that so you could grab as much vino as possible. You are indeed a clever one...

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  5. You will miss these days, I guarantee it! Then you get to do it all over again with grandchildren....only they will announce your grandmother status to anyone who passes by and will point out all the obvious and not so obvious signs of your aging.

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  6. So helpful, so literate. You must be so proud, when you're not pretending not to know him. :)

    Reminds me of a time - oh, so long ago now - when a 5-year-old Kana used the quiet of the bank teller line to clear up some questions she had for her mother about another v-word...to give you a hint, both you and and my mother and I have one. It was QUITE the entertaining wait, I'm sure.

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  7. LOL! Aww, he helped! Well, he helped you look like a drunk, but still ;P

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When you write a comment, it makes me feel like I won the lottery or at the very least like I ate an ice-cream sundae. (This has nothing to do with the fact that I did just eat an ice-cream sundae.)