accidental awesomeness

We recently had a childless friend ask us how you learn to be a parent. It was an intriguing and loaded question but Phil and I both answered the same way: you totally make it up as you go along. I fail a lot. Occasionally though, a seemingly dumb idea ends up hitting the jackpot with my kids. Case in point...

Last week I bought gift cards at Whole Foods. They gave me these little mini-paper bags to put the cards in. Normally I wouldn't have taken them since I planned to use the gift cards myself, but they were just so cute and I thought we could do an art project with them.

This evening Phil had a meeting and I needed to go to the store. After dinner I packed up my very exhausted kids and started to head out. As I pulled my keys out of my purse I saw the little bags. I gave one to each kid and told them that they were our special shopping bags, and they could keep their coupons in them. Instantly the crankiness was gone and they were so excited. I stuck a coupon in each bag and they both held onto them the entire shopping trip. It was a stroke of genius (or desperation) that just happened to stave off a couple of emotional breakdowns. The shopping trip was successful... we got home and I put their shopping bags with our other reusable bags for next time. But first I took this picture:



Now if anyone has any ideas on how to get my child out of this "pockey shirt" that he's been wearing for 4 days, I'm all ears.