When mom solidarity puts you on someone's kill list.

Mom solidarity is a real thing. If there's one thing being a mom has taught me about other moms it's that we need to stick together. We don't know what we're doing 90% of the time and the other 10% of the time is feeding the child or they're asleep so it's pretty easy. Food + sleep (but not at the same time) = living, breathing child. Sure we all have our parenting methods, but when it comes down to it I feel like we all just need to get "You go, Glen Coco" tattooed on our foreheads. If your kid isn't being abused or neglected you're doing it right. Fact. It took me a little while to figure that one out, but now I just want to fist bump half the moms I see out there for just being moms. But I abstain because I don't want anyone to think I'm trying to assault them.

We painted our hallway a couple weekends ago. It went better than expected (minimal swearing, no tears) so I offered to do the weekly grocery shop solo while Karl finished up. Grocery shopping is pretty low on my list of favourite activities so I usually make sure we do it as a family.

While at the grocery store, there was a fellow mom there with her two daughters, around the ages of eight and 10. As I wheeled around the produce section I could hear her telling one of her kids to get mushrooms. Her daughter started ranting about how gross mushrooms were and how much she really didn't want to get them because she really didn't like them and really didn't want to eat them because gross! You could tell this mom was having a long day as she, only slightly hysterically, declared that the mushrooms were for her and no one else would have to eat but could her daughter just please get some mushrooms.

Enter mom solidarity. I chuckled to myself as I pushed my cart, containing a jumbo box of Pampers and clearance baby clothes, and gave her my sympathetic mom smile. It's the smile that says hey, we've all been there. I can't even reason with my kid so when he starts to freak out Iso  just have to give him something to put in his mouth to shut him up.

Sometimes mom solidarity backfires. Maybe she didn't see the diapers in my cart or the bags under my eyes. Maybe she missed to stack of baby/toddler clothes in my cart. She might have missed those things on me, but I did not miss the dead-eyed stare from her.

I moved away from the mushroom section as quickly as I could, making the most of my calming grocery shop. I almost bumped into her and her kids later on, and I smiled, hoping that maybe my understanding just caught her off guard last time.

I'm not sure I've ever had anyone give me an actual death stare in Superstore before (except for my husband, of course). I ran away before she could corner me and slip a razor blade into my apples.

It's a good thing I didn't go for the old fist bump.