where do you put the baby?

Recently our fridge started to get bare – really bare – and we were desperate for a trip to the grocery store. Since neither of us had tried grocery shopping with Zuzu alone, we waited for a day when all three of us could go together. However, when we grabbed a cart at the store we were perplexed how to go about securely putting Zuzu’s carseat on the cart.

“Um, there are no directions on this cart” said Ty, puzzled, as we jiggled the upper rack. Everything we tried seemed a little precarious. The longer we stood there, the clearer I thought I recalled an episode of 20/20 warning of shopping carts tipping over, baby and all, if the carrier was installed wrong. I pondered asking someone for help but felt a little silly (before Zuzu, if I’d seen another couple fumbling around trying to get their carrier containing an itty bitty baby hooked on the front of the grocery cart, I might have been guilty of thinking they weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed). So we decided to do what most hungry, fridge-bare people lacking shopping cart/baby carrier instructions would do, and simply put the carrier containing Zuzu directly in the cart.

Except she took up the entire cart.

“There’s got to be someone else in here with a carrier on the shopping cart,” one of us muttered thinking we’d simply look to see how it was done, and we set off down the aisle. Hmm, good idea, except everyone’s cart was baby-free.

“Let’s see -- bread, buns, is there anything else we need?”

We quickly envisioned trying to shove a big sweaty gallon of milk and a carton of eggs in the cart, except the only place left to put food was on top of her. Instead we pushed our cart containing two food items and a baby to the checkout line.

(The next day a friend, who is also a new mom, explained how the carseat securely attaches to the shopping cart and affirmed that she initially was mystified too – fortunately we weren’t alone -- after all, how would you know how to do it unless someone showed you?)