The Shopping Collision

I've recently headed out on my first and few excursions with Anna in tow. These three outings have given way to small revelations in the field of traveling with your newborn.

1. I have been food shopping with her once, and since she's too small for the cart, I had to keep her in the car seat.

Placing the car seat in the carriage (read: shopping cart!) meant I couldn't see where I was going, so I put her in the lower part of the carriage - you know, where all the groceries go. This WOULD have worked out...if we didn't need so many groceries.

We managed to get out of there with what we needed.

I realize they make carriages with baby seats attached, but I couldn't find any and I doubt their sanitation is up to my meager standards. And really, hard plastic? Would YOU want to lay on that for a good half hour or more?

2. Our recent trip to Walmart had me repeating my experience with food shopping, only we needed less stuff, the shopping cart was bigger, and the aisles were much wider. My observation here is that if you are traveling with a newborn, you could probably walk out with half the store for free and the only thing the greeter will remember is that you had a gorgeous newborn with you. I brought my own bag (YAY less plastic - learn more about plastic and how to reduce it from a friend's blog about her year long plastic collection/reduction), and I could have put ANYTHING in it.

And gotten away with it. Because I had a newborn.

3. Kohls. WTH. This was my first experience shopping using Anna's stroller. I didn't need much, and the Chicco strollers have a HUGE basket underneath (although using the car seat with the stroller means it's nearly inaccessible) and maneuver fairly well. Plus they fold up pretty easily and don't weigh a lot a ton. I was armed with my Mommy Hook (SO helpful) and the small diaper bag squished under the stroller. What I wasn't prepared for was the narrowness of the aisles.

Holy freaking skinny Batman. I barely would have fit down those aisles when I was pregnant, much less with a stroller. I lost count of the things I ran into with that stroller. You could only fit one person down a shoe aisle at a time (regardless of your stroller status). EXTREMELY disappointing, considering Kohls has a pretty decent selection and prices and gimmicks to get you in the store (and I criticize as a former employee). Seriously, do you not want me to shop there? Your carriages suck (and I mean really), your aisles are so narrow Victoria's Secret models would have trouble with them, and it takes so long to get a backup cashier I have to go back to the kids section to get Anna a bigger size (and the backup cashier ALWAYS looks pissed off. Why? Because they come from a department, which now has probably no one in it, and they are getting behind on their work, which they will get yelled at for later. It's a no win situation).

So now, when I'm up in the middle of the night with Anna, I can Google helpful shopping tips with newborns and share them with you.

All of my spam readers. In Russia.

I'll start you off. Tip #1. Don't take the kid with you. Get a sitter. Problem (almost) solved.