Month: July 2009

I want to tell you about this little experience so you can be extra cautious, and NOT have it happen to you!!! On Friday, I ventured to the grocery store with the kids (always an action-packed adventure). I was pushing the cart, with Charlotte in the car seat in the small front section close to me, and Chase sitting in the big part of the cart. (Usually Chase won’t sit in the cart for the life of him, but on this particular occasion, he was insisting on the opposite– whatever.) Charlotte’s carseat handle was in the down position because she was a little fussy from teething so I kept taking her out to carry her for a minute, and then putting her back in, so I could more easily push the heavy cart.

I had just taken her out and then put her back into the carseat, and was reaching to grab some milk, when Chase somehow pushed down on her carseat handle, and all of a sudden it flipped over into the main part of the cart. In a split second I looked down to see the carseat upside down in the cart, heard Charlotte screaming and Chase crying, so I quickly flipped the carseat back over and scooped up my baby who was lying under the carseat in the cart (NOT a pretty sight). Charlotte was wailing in pain, and I guessed that Chase was just screaming because he knew something bad had happened. Amidst the kids’ screaming I noted that Charlotte’s poor little head was red and had white, slightly indented lines on it from the shopping cart, which told me that she had hit her head in the cart when she fell in. While comforting both of them, I opened up the infant ibuprofen I had just thrown in the cart, and gave some to her since I figured that in addition to the pain of her teeth coming in, she probably now had a headache. Needless to say, I held her the rest of the time, and didn’t dare put her back in the carseat while we were in the store! I hurriedly finished the shopping, experiencing those familiar mommy emotions where I was feeling overwhelmed by everything and trying not to break down & cry.

When we got back to the car, Charlotte fussed a little when I was putting her in the carseat, and Chase commented somberly, “I think she’s scared I’m going to tip her over again.” So we had a little talk on the way home about how that wasn’t his fault, that it was an accident, and we both hadn’t known that that would happen. He seemed to feel better about it after we discussed it.

I also called my mom for moral support and she said to just watch Charlotte’s behavior for the rest of the afternoon, which I did, and she seems completely fine, thank goodness.

SO just be careful when you take little ones shopping! I know I should have been more careful, even though I really had no idea that the carseat was so vulnerable on there. Here are different ways I could have avoided this: one is that I should have remembered to bring the Baby Bjorn and could have just carried Charlotte in there, but I had accidentally left it at home. And I should have had her buckled in at all times in the carseat, and I should have made Chase walk so that he wouldn’t have been so close to the apparently vulnerable baby seat… Just learn from my mistakes!

For church, my current calling is teaching the age 10- & 11-year-old girls on Sundays and holding Activity Days every other week. Last year our group was relatively calm and composed, whereas this year our group is a little more “spunky!” Chase loves coming to the activities with me and diving into whatever we’re doing. Here’s a weeding activity we did recently:

We also joined the younger group of girls a couple weeks ago to visit the BYU Museum of Art. (It’s always fun going back to my old “tromping grounds” without any sort of test or paper weighing heavy on my mind.) At the MOA, they have this activity available where they provide costumes for the kids to dress up in. We took advantage of that, then walked around, finding the girls’ characters in the paintings and briefly discussing the paintings. I was surprised that there wasn’t any complaining or arguing about who got which outfit! They’re good girls. It was a nice, calm, educational activity (my parents were visiting and watched Chase & Charlotte for me! thanks!!!).