IKEA is Swedish for Babies

So this weekend I discovered where Swedish people dump their babies - and also where my crazy Swedish cousin got that weird caviar in a tube he sent us last Christmas. That's right, IKEA.

TOHMF and I decided to waste some time on Saturday by shopping for new living room lighting. Yes, we're boring suburbanites. But I had a hankering for some church basement Swedish meatballs, so off we went.

Now normally, I love me some cheap household goods. And well placed depository's for rugrats in giant ball bins. How nice! A store where kids can play and families can shop! Oh, if only that were the case.

It was fun for about 20 minutes, until we stopped wandering through the mazey showroom and actually tried to find something. At first, I was blinded by the cheapness - wine glasses, $10 for $5! Cocktail ice cube trays, 10 for $2! (TOHMF lost 10 minutes of his life prying me away from the wicked cheap plants and pots in the gardening department).

But slowly I began to realize that the children were multiplying and the number of attentive parents were rapidly diminishing. I don't know where the parents were going, but they certainly weren't going to put their kids in the kid depository. If anything, they were going to find more three-wide strollers to block the aisles. The ones that weren't otherwise strapped down were running loose, screaming, hollering and licking things.

Tiny tots twisted in between our legs, ran loose through glasswares, pulled on exposed lighting cords. There was one tense moment as I played peek-a-boo-let's-find-your-mother with a set of three year old twins. TOHMF even stopped pointing out cute sleeping babies (either out of finger fatigue or lack of sleeping babies - most of them were screaming...)

Things reached a critical mass by the time we hit the lunch counter. No grown up food here, only macaroni and cheese with french fries, or 50 cent hot dogs were left by the time we got there. Oh, and all the cartoned 2% milk you should shake a tiny Ikea golf pencil at.

Now, I'm not anti-kid. But two hours of walking through a kiddie maze on a merchandise treasure hunt was enough to make even the most soft-hearted singleton's run away (run away!).

Kids, god bless 'em. But please, mix your kids and kid-friendly shopping wisely. This stuff is not for amateurs.