Shopping day

This morning Andrew took Phoebe shopping. He's been taking her for a few weeks now and she loves it because she gets to wave at everybody and remind him that we need bananas. I love it because he used to always take the littlest kids with him as "shopping buddies" every Saturday to give me, like, my one and only break from little kids in the whole week...but hasn't done that since March 2020. 

That's a long time to go without shopping buddy time!

Today she reminded him of more than just bananas.

After they'd finished at Costco, they headed out to the van, put the groceries in, and then wheeled the cart over to the rack. Andrew took Phoebe out and started walking back to the van and Phoebe started fussing at him, "Dada! Ahhhh! Dada! Ahhhh!"

"Yes, those are the carts," he agreed. 

"Dadaaaaaa! Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Dad!"

"I know you like to ride in the cart. You can have another ride at the next store," he promised.

Because after Costco they hit up Kroger.

"Dada! Dada! Ahhhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!" she whined, pointing to the carts some more.

He wrestled her into her carseat while she writhed and yelled. But finally she resigned to her fate and just...grumbled at him...while they drove to Kroger. 

The arrived, and he ran around to get her out of her carseat, plopped her in a shopping cart and reached for the diaper bag...but the diaper bag wasn't there. 

"Oh," he said.

The diaper bag...was in the shopping cart at Costco.

I'm sure she was rolling her eyes at him the whole way back to Costco. Silly Daddy! If only he had listened!

(If only Phoebe had more words!)

Actually, he was telling me this story in the kitchen while she was drinking a cup of water—which she usually calls "wa-wa"—and when he said just that—"Phoebe needs more words!"—she put her hand inside her cup, gave it a little splash, and said quite clearly, "WATER."

It was pretty funny. But she was back to "wa-wa" at dinner.

Phoebe—can you say, "Daddy, you forgot the diaper bag in the shopping cart?"

*****

The kids ate lunch while I was putting Phoebe down for a nap (she had a bunch of stuff when she got home from shopping because she was so excited about all the food she and Daddy bought), and once she was down, I came downstairs to have some lunch myself.

I warmed up some leftover tomato soup for myself, along with a pumpkin muffin that's been in the freezer probably since November. 

Alexander came inside while I was eating and was like, "Huh. That's strange. Even though I did have lunch I am suddenly hungry again and would really like a muffin."

"Huh, that is strange," I said. "But as you said, you already had lunch. I've hardly eaten all day and this is my lunch, so I'm going to eat it. But you can look in the freezer to see if you can find another one."

He gave me a solemn nod (solemnly nodding is his "thing" right now) and wandered into the kitchen where he opened the freezer and partially explained his presence to Andrew.

"Dad, even though I had lunch...I'm kind of hungry again," he said, moving a package of mixed vegetables. 

"Oh, are you?" Andrew asked. "Or did you just see a muffin and so wanted one, too?"

"Well, yeah...that..." Alexander said. 

"You're pretty transparent," Andrew said, laughing.

"What?!" Alexander shrieked, slamming the freezer shut and holding up his hands. "I am not!"

"Oh, well, what are you then? Opaque?"

"Exactly! Can you see through my hands? I cannot! I can see them just fine!"

"I just meant your motives were transparent, meaning I saw through your excuse of being hungry."

"Oh. Well. Yeah. I want a muffin."

He ended up finding some frozen cookies from who knows when (ages ago) and warmed those up for himself and the outside kids. They weren't muffins but they were good enough.