Shopping Trips

Eddie is now just over seven months old, and in the last month he's been able to sit in the child seat of shopping carts. Here he is in a natty and warm striped ensemble ready to visit WalMart, via a sewing machine shop to show him off to some of Beth's friends, and Woodcraft (a shop for woodworking tools and machinery) for an adapter part for Beth's dust extraction system.

The hat & coat were given to us by a generous colleague of Beth's. Jocelyn, who has been passing on her old children's clothes now that her brood are all grown too big. They're perfect for the chilly Autumnal weather that started seriously in mid-October, and being fleecy are also water repellant to a degree, and easy to wash. I think Jocelyn may have given us these footed trousers too, ideal for preventing socks from going missing, and they can go over a cloth diaper too. Ed's feet are big for his age, so many footed things are a little too tight for our preference, but these are my current favorite leggings.

Ed clearly enjoys the wider vista he can scope out from his new vantage point, and if left too close to items on shelves will happily grab stuff to drooling on. You can clearly see his two front teeth in this grin, and from the slobberfest we are currently experiencing some upper teeth are planning to join them soon. 

Not having to take a stroller into stores is also a great advantage for the parents. A shopping cart gives more space for purchases, almost everyone is pushing one so you don't feel like you're getting in the way, and putting Edward in a position where we can watch him and he us (and absolutely everything else too) is great. The drawback is that he radiates cuteness to a range of several aisles, so that hordes of (mostly) ladies gather round rows deep admiring him, which does impede one's progress. However it's nice that people admire him so, and he clearly enjoys the attention judging by his grins and bounces, and it would not be fair of us to keep all this cuteness to ourselves, so overall we enjoy the attention he gets.

Finally, I note with pride that Edward is a wonderfully patient shopper (at present!), so involved in looking at things and reaching for things (or slobbering on something we give him to play with) that unless we are particularly laggardly in our progress, he never complains or makes any undue noise. If he sees another baby or child "kicking off" (our current term for bad behaviour) he just looks at them with an expression of mixed bewilderment, hauteur and disdain that clearly says "My goodness, what a ruckus. I say my dear old thing, is that strictly necessary? You don't see me embarrassing my parents like that, even if they do embarrass me. Just pipe down a little, and we'll all have a much nicer day. Thank you so much."