Ready to Go to Costco?

I try really hard to not take the boys out shopping.  Mostly because it's a pain.  I find myself forgetting half of the things I was planning on buying.  Or worse, coming home with a bag of neon blue candy suckers or a pink furry robot cat that purrs and walks.  Not speaking from experience here, wink.  I pick my battles.  And while I wouldn't willingly give the kids a huge neon blue sucker (hello blue saliva that stains their clothes FOREVER) to munch on, I'd be willing to give it to them when we're in the middle of Target and we are almost in full on meltdown mode.  Actually, I'd be willing to give them anything if it just meant calm bodies and happy boys until we reach the car.  Am I the only mother that does this?  Gosh, I hope not.

The other week I had to pick up some 1 hour prints at Costco.  The boys were home from school, so we all went and made it a family event to pick them up.  Can I just quickly say how grateful I am for large Costco shopping carts?  Enough space for both of them in those carts!  We love Trader Joe's, but I swear we've been asked to leave on two different occasions because of those teeny tiny shopping carts and the fighting that ensues!  But I digress...

Anyway, the prints weren't ready by the time that we got there.  They told us to come back in 10 minutes.  So we perused the Christmas aisle.  Ez and Ash loved the Christmas aisle and loved looking at the bright lights and Christmas trees.  They touched everything.  I let them. (GASP!)  Ten minutes flew by.  We left the Christmas aisle, picked up our prints, and headed home.  End of story. 

The following Monday was a no school day because of fall break and parent teacher conferences.  I was worried about this day because sometimes the smallest change in routine can really throw the kids off.  I got Ezra up first, like I always do, and started helping him get dressed for the day.  I asked him: "Ezra, what do you want to do today?"  Now you need to understand that I wasn't expecting an answer.  Ezra doesn't answer questions if he doesn't have the answer memorized or if the question isn't concrete.  He also portrays some Echolalia, where instead of answering the question, he would just repeat back to me, "Ezra what do you want to do today?"  We've been working on answering questions for over a year.  He now can tell you his name when asked.  He can also tell you which planet is the biggest, which planet is the closest to the sun, and which planet has rings.  He can't tell you how old he is.  Or who is his brother.  But we're working on it.  He's good at receptively labeling things (like "what's this?" *pointing to a chair* "chair!"  or "who is that?"  *pointing to Asher* "Asher!")

Anyway, back to my story.  So I asked him what he wanted to do today.  He looked up at me and said: "Ready to go to Costco!"  I literally fell to the ground.  Mostly because I was shocked and surprised.  I didn't know if this was just a coincidence.  Maybe he didn't understand my question and he had been thinking about all of those awesome Christmas decorations at Costco and it was just a coincidence.  I don't know, but I also didn't care.  I wanted to reward him for being the best kid ever.  So dang it, we spent the whole day at Costco.

You probably think I am kidding.  And maybe I am exaggerating just a teensy bit, but we did spend a good 3 hours that day at Costco.  It was actually so adorable to watch Ezra know and tell me exactly what he wanted.  I was silently having a party and cheering him on! 

When we finally reached Costco that day Ezra just kept saying: "ready to go to Costco!  Yeah, Costco, yeah Costco!"  The boys got in the shopping cart and I pushed it inside.  Ezra moved to the front of the shopping cart and directed me to exactly where he wanted to go.  He pointed and said: "that way, that way, that way!"  While pointing to the exact aisle I should go to.  Of course, we ended up in the Christmas aisle.  Ezra especially loved this very breakable and fragile snowman with a moving train inside of if.  He loved it so much that if it wasn't $70 bucks I probably would have bought it for him.  He was mesmerized.

And like I said earlier, we literally spent 3 hours in Costco on that Christmas aisle.  A very well spent 3 hours, I think.