The controlling man in my life

I need to apologize to every mother who, in my self-obsessed 20s, I condemned as being a bad parent because I thought you were letting your baby be a wild child. I know now that you don't control your toddler; he controls you.

While my 23-month-old is the apple of my eye, he's become a crab apple in the past few weeks as he learns to assert his independence.

He has two favourite sayings. If he drops something and I offer to get it, he'll reject my help: "No, I get it!"

And my baby boy who used to love being in his stroller or in a shopping cart, doesn't like to sit anymore.

"I walk!" he'll demand.

One of my favourite things to do with my son is (was) grocery shopping. He'd sit in the cart and choose green peppers for me to bag and we'd open a bag of cookies in the store and each have one.

This week, when we went shopping, I evidently brought the wrong child. Strange, how the spawn of the devil looks just like my angelic boy.

We stepped into the store and there, just a few steps in, was my worst nightmare: A bin full of pink, blue, green and purple balls.

"Balls!" my son shouted. "Balls! Balls! Balls!"

(Whoever set this display up, doesn't have children or has a vendetta against mothers.)

Before I could grab my son, he picked up two balls and then kicked them toward the broccoli. Then, he escaped under the turnstile, leaving me behind with the shopping cart.

On my way to grab him, I threw two bunches of broccoli (just 99 cents each!) into my cart and took off in my high-heeled shoes. We zipped through the pharmacy for diapers and then headed to the meat section for chicken, still playing soccer with two balls.

Then, he picked up the balls and whipped them at a frozen hamburger display and then ran away.

With five packages of cold, soggy chicken skewers under my arm, I set off to catch him, my purse still in the cart, now an aisle away.

And then he fell. Face first. The screams echoed in the store.

I picked him up and carried him back to the shopping cart, his legs like egg beaters, whirling around, kicking me in the thighs and stomach. I grabbed one ball from the frozen burgers display and chased the other, which was rolling towards the dairy section.

"I walk! I walk!" he screamed.

As soon as I put him down again, he took off. Giggling. I caught up to my son in the cereal aisle, where he threw himself on the floor and started kicking the shelf, causing boxes of bran to topple.

"Excuse me!" a woman said, exasperated as she tried to get past us. I scooped up my son again and

stuck him in the main part of the cart with the food. As I flew around the aisles, my son calmed down.

I was checking my grocery list, enjoying the peace, when a woman strutted over to my cart.

"Ma'am," she spitted. "Your son -" she paused. "Is sitting on your broccoli!" He must have sensed the hostility

because he snapped out of his happy place.

"I walk!" he screamed.

We dashed to the checkout, where my son whipped the balls at a 20-something male cashier - over and over again.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized - over and over again.

"This is the best part of my day," he said, as he rang through my flattened broccoli.

"It's fun." Fun?

And here is the rest of it.