Pick Your Battles

As a mother, I am both intrigued and amused by those words when I see them, or hear them from fellow mothers. Pick. Your. Battles.

It usually means they are about to embark on a tale about something completely crazy or embarrassing that their child made an attempt to get away with and the well meaning mother, in their ever growing wisdom, or exhaustion, figured it really wasn't going to hurt anything to let their child do it.

Which brings us to sweet little Tate. My little errand buddy. We once again found ourselves at Target this evening while the girls were at AWANA. With the mere mention of leaving the house, all the kids scramble to find some small token/souvenir to take with them. Doesn't matter how far we are going. Could be to the mailbox. Could be to Alabama. They are bound and determined to bring something along for the ride.

They learned early on that this needs to be a fairly small item, and a fairly small number of items...such as a single item perhaps. We are usually running behind schedule and there isn't much time left to grab half of their worldly possessions and stuff them in the van. Plus I have an unwritten "You must be able to carry it yourself" rule. I am usually grabbing shoes, coats, and calling my lost cell phone from the landline as we bumble down the stairs to the garage.

Of course Tate is no exception to this plea for a familiar item to join our journey.

"We need to run to the grocery store real quick," I may holler.

"Boo key come?," Tate asks innocently. (Translation: Blue Blanket)

"Time to load up to go to church...".

"Monkey come?", (Yes, his stuffed monkey...he says that one pretty plainly).

Ok, so getting back to Target. He had already agreed to wear his coat and sit in the cart for our errand so I was feeling pretty positive about the whole experience. This feeling rapidly left when I opened the door to the van to scoop him out and he made a quick scan to find something he could bring with him...

"My poos come?" he asked as he reached down underneath my seat.

"You're what?!" I shrieked horrified as his little hand pulled out Drue's hot pink purse with jewels on it.

He looked up at me sweetly as he was pulling the strap up over his shoulder and repeated in more of a statement, "My poos come".

I quickly fast forwarded the 2 possible scenarios of (a) denying him his request thus leading to a tug of war over the purse with him screaming and me jumping back in the van without ever setting a foot in Target...or (b) letting him take the cute little purse (which in no way matched his shoes) and writing a humorous tale for Mothers everywhere (well, the handful who read this anyway).

He tucked it next to him and let me strap him into the cart seat, where he stayed fairly peacefully the entire errand.

A surrender well worth it....