When you have three toddlers, it's hard to imagine a different way of life. Ours are at the age where they need constant supervision and attention, especially when we think about leaving the relatively safe confines of our child-proof house. Danger is still a vague concept to them.
For most outings, we like to take one adult per child, if at all possible. Because Mommy only has two hands, and inevitably, they want to run in three different directions. There are some exceptions, like the weekly trip to Sam's Club where there's enough seats to strap two little guys in, and Connor is pretty well behaved in the basket. I will also take the three of them to places where I know they can be safely managed via our triple stroller, but you have to watch accessibility issues here. A triple stroller is by no means small, and it has to be worth the effort of assembling and disassembling it at each stop.
Today, with only two toddlers, I did something unimaginable with three. I took them to the real grocery store, on our once every three weeks trip that usually takes a few hours and costs several hundred dollars. I will not say it was fun, because it wasn't. But it was manageable. The twins were strapped into the harnesses on the special kids' cart, and did relatively well with the production of DumDum suckers about mid-way through the excursion (though next time I should also include a few wipes too, rather than waiting until we get back to the truck and the diaper bag!). They were bored, basically, and the suckers were enough to capture their attention and gain Mommy enough time to finish up business and get them back into the truck.
All in all, a successful outing with two that would not have worked with three. But probably not one I'll do often, unless I really have to. You live and you learn (though you have to at least try it the first time to know!).
