Cart vs. Stroller Conundrum

My trip to Target this morning involved a puzzle for me. I had to decide whether to put Ethan in his stroller or put him in a shopping cart. Normally, I will put him in the stroller if I'm just getting a few small things or if I need to go into the dressing room {which usually don't}. But, I will put him in the shopping cart if I'm getting several things or anything large in size. Today I needed to go in the dressing room AND get several things. I was shopping for one clothing item {that I HAD to try on first} and some groceries so I wouldn't have to make another trip to the grocery store.

As most people know, you can't take a shopping cart into the dressing room, nor will you be able to fit very many groceries in various compartments of your stroller. In the five minutes it took me to get to the store, I was really having to think about this one. I could take the stroller and then drop it at the car after the dressing room visit...but that sort of defeats the purpose of the one-stop trip. But, there is no way I was fitting a whole cart in the dressing room and also no way I would take Ethan into the dressing room with me without him sitting in something. I could picture myself having to prevent him from crawling under the floating walls that separate the dressing room stalls, while being half dressed myself. Not fun.

What I decided defintely worked...I put Ethan in his stroller first and then in a shopping cart when we were done with the dressing room. I just folded his stroller up and put it on the lower shelf of the cart while we did our grocery shopping. Thank goodness my stroller folds up really flat and is really lightweight {I could write a book about how much I love my stroller, but that's another post}, because it fit on the bottom shelf...but only horizontally. So, I was a bit of a wide load strolling through the aisles. But, we made it. All in one piece. And all in one trip. Who says this job doesn't involve problem solving?