It�s official. I�ve become one of those supermarket moms I always used to hate. You know the kind. They�re always telling their kids things like, �No, no, no!� and �Come here this instant!� when the kid doesn�t seem to be doing anything particularly awful. �Why not give him a break?� I used to wonder. Although I swore I would never be that kind of mom, I also swore I would never be the mom of the kid who pulls everything off the shelves in order to throw it in a heap of broken glass and dented boxes and cans on the floor. And frankly, my second allegiance wins out over the first.

The first item knocked to the floor on today�s supermarket adventure was, fortunately, a large can of tomatoes on a low shelf. It suffered no apparent ill effects. The fall may even have been an accident, although AJ had been walking with his left arm outstretched all the way down the aisle, tempting fate that he might veer slightly toward the shelf and accidentally touch an item. But when I saw AJ shove the shopping cart purposefully into a pyramid of Captain Crunch boxes, I knew there was going to be trouble. �No!� I yelled and, in a scene that would certainly be shown in slow motion if anyone cared to watch it on TV, I leapt over AJ, who stood stock still cackling with glee, and hurled my body between the cart and the cereal with the urgency of someone rescuing a baby from an oncoming train.

Disaster averted. The world is safe for Captain Crunch again. Our shopping trip was almost over. Only one aisle to go. Unfortunately, there was a line at the deli counter. As I waited for my husband�s weekly requested supply of cold cuts for sandwiches, my attention flagged momentarily. AJ was standing right beside me -- what could go wrong? Unfortunately, I had failed to notice that standing next to him was a towering display of bags of mini donuts. They were not towering for long. The next thing I knew, AJ was half buried in donuts, as he sought the bottom-most bag. �Look, Mommy, Chocolate Donuts! Yum!�

Fortunately, it seems I have an untapped talent for donut stacking. Our shopping trip completed, we were able to slip away without further trauma. Still, it might be a good idea to don a disguise on my next trip. Better safe than sorry.

When we got home and sat down to lunch, AJ turned to me and said, �I want a tortilla in a bottle.� I was puzzled. �A what?� �Tortilla in a bottle. The thing that looks like juice but isn�t juice.� Finally, I realized, he was asking for a tornado in a bottle, a kids science project that we�d played with at our local nature store, where we buy our bird seed. AJ had been fascinated, watching the colored water swirl from one bottle to the next, turning it over and over again until I finally had to remind him that it was time to go. I assured him that we would try to make our own tornado soon, although I think we would refrain from inserting any tortillas into bottles for the foreseeable future. AJ seemed satisfied with the response. I think my young Einstein will be conducting some experiments this afternoon. Perhaps a lesson in the physics of donut-stacking might be in order.

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