My two oldest children are 17 months apart in age. When they were small, we owned a double-wide stroller that we used for them whenever we went shopping. We made one of these trips specifically to buy a new coat for my oldest daughter, May, who was the only daughter at the time. We made a trip to Memphis for this shopping trip. From where we lived at the time, we planned on a two hour trip just to get to the store where we wanted to shop. This meant we had to do planning to make sure that we avoid crying kids. We successfully avoiding the screaming road trip but we had sleepy kids when we arrived at the store.
We found things seemed to work better when we let the kids go ahead and sleep when they were out. I managed to put my son James in the stroller without waking him up and May was awake and excited about shopping for a new coat. When we arrived in the girls coat department of the store, May got out of the stroller and started shopping with her mom. James was stirring and we were afraid that if he woke up, he would still be tired and fussy. I attempted to keep him sleeping by continuing to push the stroller in circles through the store. I found a path around that area of the store that was big enough that I had a little variety in where I was at but it also regularly passed by the coat section so I could keep an eye on the shopping progress.
On one of the last rounds, I was coming up the aisle toward the girls coat area and I saw May standing there wearing a cute little green coat. It had a matching hat and muffler. It was perfect. As I looked up the aisle at her, it was one of those moments that I’m sure many fathers have experienced. I was so proud of my little girl. She looked like a little angel. Her smile was beaming. She looked good and she knew it. As we approached her, I was probably holding back tears of joy when she looked at me and said, “I pooted.” My little angel was a fart blossom. Daddy’s little stinker. I couldn’t be more proud.