No one tells you that you will foolishly buy, not even thinking twice about the purchase, an obscene amount of _____.

You fill in the blank.  Every family is different.

For us it is presently cereal, milk and eggs. Maybe my children are running a small minion breakfast diner while Erik and I sleep or they are making some sort of cereal cake-bake when I am not looking, but the amount of these three items we go through is A-A-A-MAZING.

I tried keeping count of how long or should I say how short it was taking to get through a gallon of milk. I think my count was thrown off by the shock of having to stop at the grocery store AGAIN for, what to my children is, liquid gold. At this rate we need to either buy stock in a dairy farm or trade our Maltese-Shih tzu in for a dairy cow.

I’m pretty sure Target has me on some sort of high-alert list for use on cereal coupons. I roll in with 10 coupons, use all 10 plus a Cartwheel deal and roll out with 5 boxes of cereal for $0.02. It seems as if I’m rolling back into the big red demon each week with a sack full of coupons to fill my cart with cardboard boxes full of my children’s drug of choice … puffed rice, wheat and corn goodness. Needless to say with the amount of cereal boxes I have been stashing for crafts, rather than buying our next home we can just build one out of boxes.

I feel bad for chickens born during my kid’s lifetime, those ladies are working double time laying eggs just to fill the bellies of my three babies. We went from buying just cartons of eggs to the monstrous boxes that prior to children I thought were just used by bakers or ordered by the Food Network.  I’m currently trolling Pinterest for DIY ideas on hen houses and Craigslist for a “clean eating – child friendly” chicken.

People told me I would be amazed by the amount of diapers I would buy. Guess what? I am NOT. Never have we ran out of diapers. Never have I needed to stop by Walgreens to grab a sack of diapers. Never have my kids screamed bloody murder because we didn’t have a diaper on hand. LIARS. Diapers were a given. Milk, cereal and eggs WERE NOT. Where was the warning there?

You’ve been warned.

*Check out the start of Parenthood Chronicles and the first entry here.