Bribery

I recently realized, when kids get out of diapers, the diaper budget is replaced by the 'bribery budget'. My shopping trips have become a tug of war of mommy gets 20 minutes if toddler gets 2 bucks of stuff. So i'm paying this kid by the hour to do "my" work. Who's the boss here? So before this kids starts generating an income from me I have to come up with an evil mom plan or something. God I tell you these kids are the most manipulative beings you will ever deal with in your life. It's just too easy to fall for them, so cute, so innocent, NOT! I think they should make Dollar Stores next to grocery stores, I swear they'll do more business. The balloon lady at the grocery store now knows us and the only question she asks and not me, my toddler is, what color would you like? She knows what color string, how long it should be, everything. The thing is though that it works. Rather than dealing with the drama of crying and wailing and tantrums every 32 seconds it's good to have an incentive for them to behave, something to look forward to. This lady has moped pretty much the floors of Giants, Target and Walmart with her tantrum episodes but since bribing has come in to play I get hardly any of that. It goes like 'Do you want to sit on the floor or eat popsicles?' guess which one she'd go for. So for a $1.89 I can have a decent shopping trip without too many hiccups and leave without making 15 people swear they won't ever have children. Mom's know its a freaking deal. The only flaw in this oh-so-perfect plan is that bribe money is proportional to the age of the child. Even now my 3 year old would ask to get atleast 4 things out of which i'll agree on on. Every few feet she picks up something and says 'mommy go home now?'. All she knows is that we are there to buy her crap. So now for every trip i've decided that two bucks is the limit. Let's see how long thats going to work. Things kids make us do,tsk tsk.