After I had my son, I would see moms at the grocery store opening packages of food that they hadn’t yet paid for and feed the contents to their kids. I knew that this was definitely not going to be me.

My child would have the patience to sit in the cart quietly while I searched the store for what we needed. He would never need to be fed at the store and would certainly NEVER cry.

Yesterday I realized that I was THAT mom. I had the crabby screaming child that was being plied with deli meats and extreme cheese goldfish crackers in order to stop him from jumping out of the cart or complaining incessantly about the length of our shopping trip.

I was that mom that was zooming up and down the aisles trying to remember what we needed quickly so that I could just get home for some piece and quiet. AND

I was that person that childless people look at and think “God! Can that woman not control her child” and there was nothing I could do about it.

The grocery store seems to be the one place that I really want my son to be good at, but he just doesn’t have it in him.

The whole experience starts out so positive, but goes down the tubes SO quickly.

I attribute the bad behavior to the over-stimulation.

There are millions of things everywhere that look like they need to be played with, except your child can’t get to them because they are locked in a cart – 4 feet off the ground! The sad part is that I have no idea how to make this chore go better. I load my pockets with toys, sing silly songs and bring treats to keep him happy.

I sometimes wonder if I should I just admit defeat and know that the grocery store will be a war zone until he’s old enough to drive the cart himself?

Any ideas? Please tell me I’m not alone…

Lots of mom stay at home with no pay, performing many duties and wearing many hats.

Yahoo has calculated, with over time, that a stay at home mom would receive $138,095 if she were being paid for her services.

This reflected a 3 percent raise from last year’s $134,121, according to Salary.com Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts.

The 10 jobs listed as comprising a mother’s work were housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist, it said.

The typical mother puts in a 92-hour work week, it said, working 40 hours at base pay and 52 hours overtime.

A mother who holds full-time job outside the home would earn an additional $85,939 for the work she does at home, Salary.com.

Last year she would have earned $85,876 for her at-home work, it said.

Salary.com compiled the online responses of 26,000 stay-at-home mothers and 14,000 mothers who also work outside the home.