An eggstravagant trip to Wal Mart

A few days ago I had to make one last run to the grocery store for a few things. I had been to the store a few times that week already, so what was one more trip.

Grocery shopping with twins is a challenge. With toddlers who don’t walk very fast and don’t fit together in the front seat of the cart anymore, I had to resort to putting them in the basket and our groceries in the front seat, underneath the cart, and all around the girls. It’s especially challenging if I end up getting lots of canned goods, which Piper loves to stack and then un-stack. I’m pushing my cart through the aisles like it’s an obstacle course, Piper was moving cans around and Lily was standing up and then sitting down.

A few items multiplied into something like 20 and I found myself standing in the paper towel, zip-lock, and trash bag aisle for my last item. I had been telling the girls to sit down the entire trip so I decided that they could stand up while I looked for some extra huge zip-lock bags. Plus, I parked the cart next to the paper towels so I figured they couldn’t hurt those, right? Right.

It turned out that allowing them to have some freedom wasn’t the brightest choice in my brain that morning. As I was squatting down by the lowest shelf inspecting too many choices, I heard these sounds: SPLAT, DRIP, CRACK, CRUNCH!! And then I heard the girls say, “Uh-oh!!” which happens to be their favorite thing to say, by the way.

I whirl around to see Lily pulling the egg carton lid up and subsequently dumping nearly all 18 eggs out and onto the floor and through our cart with its load of groceries. As I surveyed the scene, there were raw eggs dripping everywhere, eggshells hanging from the metal bars of the cart, and egg whites and yolks making little puddles around my cart like it had rained on us.

I’m not really sure what all I said in the next 90 seconds, but I’m sure it sounded something like, “No! Sit down! Yucky! No touch! Ewww!! No! Sit down, Lily! Piper, no touch, yucky! Oh this is so gross! No touch! Yucky!” Piper was eyeing her precious cans that were now oozing with egg whites and broken yolks. She reached out for them and made her toddler-like, universal noise that says, “I need that!!” I hurriedly told her an emphatic “no” that she couldn’t have them because they were now contaminated with raw grossness! Lily continued to sound the alarm with gleeful shouts of “uh oh” and “wow!”

My brain was going 900 miles an hour trying to figure out what to do with my children and this mess we were now in. That’s when I realized that I really could not have picked a better aisle to be in. Just down the row lay my saving grace: antibacterial hand wipes! I grabbed a tub of them, yanked open the top, pulled half of them out, and began to rub down the girls hands, our groceries, and anything else I saw that had been contaminated!

And while standing in our eggy mess, a mom with twin boys walked by and one of the boys asked me what happened. I told him the story and he then said to me, “Well, you’re going to need some more eggs!” And he was right.