My most embarrassing moment as a parent (so far)

Charles has told me that there needs to be more blog posts, more often and that they should be shorter. So in the spirit of shorter posts, here's a brief little anecdote to amuse and disgust you.

Children are little germ bombs. Before kids I actually had accrued sick leave. After kids all that got swallowed up as Madam caught every thing going at daycare. The most frequent culprits are colds and bouts of mild gastro. They have become an almost fortnightly occurrence in our house.

When James was only four months old I was shopping in Lincraft with the kids. We'd made it all the way to the front counter when the cramps started. Since I was done shopping I reasoned that I had time to pay for my things. Unfortunately the cramps were ramping up fast and I had to excuse myself from the shop rather quickly.

"Mama!" Charlotte panted as I hustled her along, "Mama why are we going so fast?"

"Because darling, if Mama doesn't get to a toilet soon she's going to have a really, really bad accident," I whispered, leaning down as we ran.

"Okay Mama!" she squeaked and bless her little socks she started running as fast as she could and dragging me along.

"Come on Mama! We don't want you to have a really bad accident!" she shouted as we hurtled along.

I prayed that the other shoppers weren't paying attention or couldn't understand her squeaky little voice.

She barrelled around the corner into the corridor where the toilets are and slammed her hand down on the button to open the door to the disabled toilet (which we always use because it fits all of us at once, including the enormous jogger stroller).

To my horror, as the door swung slowly open, it revealed by degrees a rather startled looking gentleman with his tackle out, preparing to do his business. As I stood, frozen in shock, and he tried to mumble something about he thought he'd locked the door, Madam darted in and addressed him with her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed.

"You have to get out now so my Mama can use the toilet otherwise she's going to have a really, really big accident!"

"Charlotte! Come out and let that poor man finish what he's doing!" I gasped, mortified.

"Er...that's okay. I think it's going to be about fifteen minutes before I'm good to go anyways," he muttered, sidling out.

As I prepared to use the facilities, blushing madly and checking twice to make sure the door was properly locked, Charlotte addressed me with the same hands-on-hips-narrowed-eyes stance.

"Mama," she said sternly, "if we take things out of a shop without paying for them, that's stealing."

And she gestured to the bottom of the stroller where all of my items from Lincraft lay, waiting for me to go back and explain and pay for them. Happy days.