sometimes a mom needs to not speak.

Motherhood involves a lot of words.

A lot of daily decisions and the answering of a lot of questions about a myriad of subjects. (Oh my word.  So many questions about SO many tricky topics.  I need to write a book listing the Questions Asked and the Answers Given.  An anonymous book.  Anonymous to protect both my children and me – because sometimes I hear my own answers and they sound kind of weird.)

So, yeah – as moms we give a lot of answers and offer a lot of instructions and say a lot of sentences.

But sometimes, as a Mom, what I mostly need to do is to BE QUIET.

Like – to just stop talking.

This weekend we were at the grocery store.  (You guys – we made it in and out of Trader Joe’s in less than twenty-five minutes while making all of our grocery purchases for the next two weeks!  I should have the kids teach a class about those mad skills.  They are so motivated. I guess they collectively dislike shopping, but since they collectively super like eating – we’ve got to meet in the middle somewhere.)

Anyway.

At the grocery store.  There we were.  Mosely was in charge of one grocery cart.  (Divide and conquer.  That’s Step One of our strategy.)

“Mosely, will you please select two bags of frozen vegetables?  One needs to be peas but you may choose whatever you’d like for the other one.”

She smiled her little Mosely smile and proceeded to roll her cart to the frozen section.

She came back with frozen peas and frozen broccoli.

Perfectly acceptable choices.

What Mosely didn’t know was that I had already purchased two bundles (heads? bunches?) of broccoli in the fresh produce area.  I already had broccoli planned for this week.

I wanted to look at Mosely’s choice and say, “No – get something else.”

But then I realized, she did exactly as I asked her to do.

I said pick one on your own, without stipulations, and she did.  Broccoli.

She had no idea what I had already put in my cart.

It’s certainly not her fault that we both thought broccoli for the vegetable choice.

I decided to just be quiet.  To smile and say, “Thanks, Mosely.”

We are eating broccoli three times this week. Whatever.  We like it.