I promise I'll come up with something to blog about myself, but for now, here's another report, on our now 18 month old, from my lovely wife:
We took a ride to Burlingame this morning. Now that her car seat is facing forward, Bean is able to recognize places, so when we hit Burlingame Avenue, she clapped and shrieked with delight and didn't stop until I unbuckled her from the carseat.
Our first stop was to hit the drycleaners to drop off your dress shirts. Bean helped me carry the pile of shirts and kept pointing to her shirt and my shirt to let me know she knew what it was she was carrying. As we walked town the street, a fire truck came by with 5 firefighters inside (it had a huge cab in front). Bean saw this and started waving like mad and they returned her greeting with a 5 bell salute and lots of hooting and hollering and waving. Bean was in her glory.
Still on a firetruck high as we entered the drycleaner, she waved and smiled vigorously at the joyless, unfriendly employee who stared blankly at bean. This lack of response only inspired bean to be more friendly and she waved and smiled with more gusto and threw in some grunts for good measure. Blank stares made way for blanker stares and we left with our ticket and headed for friendlier turf. Bean likes the music and the drinking fountain at Anthropologie and I like the merchandise, so we stopped in and made a bee line for the fountains, conveniently located in the sale rack room. Bean has at last mastered the art of drinking from a fountain and was so excited by her new accomplishment, she threw up a half cup of the contents of her stomach all over me, herself and the floor. Fortunately (or not), she missed the clothing racks so I didn't have to buy anything. Another joyless woman (it is spring, people, get happy!) witnessed our little regurgitation incident and shot bean and I a dirty look and made a tsk tsk sound as I quickly cleaned up the mess with a baby wipe I pulled from my purse.
It was a beautiful day and not even a surprise barf or a second encounter with a bitter woman could break our spirit, so we proceeded to Gumshoe, a rather upscale but friendly shoestore for kids. Bean let out some noises I've never heard before, which I translated to mean: OH MY GOD WE'VE FOUND MECCA. Tiny shoes displayed at heights ideal for toddlers' roving hands opposite big poofy round seats to climb and lounge on. Bean was drawn to a pair of sandles with big chunky metallic flowers as well as the entire row of euro-looking boys shoes. She proceeded to rearrange them as if she were the display merchandising director and the sales girl came over and applauded her efforts and for some reason started encouraging her to pick everything up and relocate it. I apologized for bean, but she said as far as she was concerned a kid that cute could do whatever she wanted in the store. Bean quickly caught on to the powers of her persuasion with this woman and proceeded to show off. Teeth were flashed, eyelashes were batted and shoes were traded back and forth. Bean then started grabbing from the top shelf ($80 and above toddler shoes) and pulling the price stickers off each shoe. As I frantically tried to match her de-stickering pace with reapplying the sticker,s the very kind and bean-smitten lady said: she can put the price stickers wherever she likes. Since I had no plans to buy anything, I decided we'd better hightail it out of there and I said something like, we'll be back with grandma. The sales girl replied: Come back anytime - you don't need to buy anything. And as we walked out the door, I heard her say to her colleague: "OMG, I want that baby!".
So for every 2 joyless women, there is one kindhearted one that makes you forget about the others.
We took a ride to Burlingame this morning. Now that her car seat is facing forward, Bean is able to recognize places, so when we hit Burlingame Avenue, she clapped and shrieked with delight and didn't stop until I unbuckled her from the carseat.
Our first stop was to hit the drycleaners to drop off your dress shirts. Bean helped me carry the pile of shirts and kept pointing to her shirt and my shirt to let me know she knew what it was she was carrying. As we walked town the street, a fire truck came by with 5 firefighters inside (it had a huge cab in front). Bean saw this and started waving like mad and they returned her greeting with a 5 bell salute and lots of hooting and hollering and waving. Bean was in her glory.
Still on a firetruck high as we entered the drycleaner, she waved and smiled vigorously at the joyless, unfriendly employee who stared blankly at bean. This lack of response only inspired bean to be more friendly and she waved and smiled with more gusto and threw in some grunts for good measure. Blank stares made way for blanker stares and we left with our ticket and headed for friendlier turf. Bean likes the music and the drinking fountain at Anthropologie and I like the merchandise, so we stopped in and made a bee line for the fountains, conveniently located in the sale rack room. Bean has at last mastered the art of drinking from a fountain and was so excited by her new accomplishment, she threw up a half cup of the contents of her stomach all over me, herself and the floor. Fortunately (or not), she missed the clothing racks so I didn't have to buy anything. Another joyless woman (it is spring, people, get happy!) witnessed our little regurgitation incident and shot bean and I a dirty look and made a tsk tsk sound as I quickly cleaned up the mess with a baby wipe I pulled from my purse.
It was a beautiful day and not even a surprise barf or a second encounter with a bitter woman could break our spirit, so we proceeded to Gumshoe, a rather upscale but friendly shoestore for kids. Bean let out some noises I've never heard before, which I translated to mean: OH MY GOD WE'VE FOUND MECCA. Tiny shoes displayed at heights ideal for toddlers' roving hands opposite big poofy round seats to climb and lounge on. Bean was drawn to a pair of sandles with big chunky metallic flowers as well as the entire row of euro-looking boys shoes. She proceeded to rearrange them as if she were the display merchandising director and the sales girl came over and applauded her efforts and for some reason started encouraging her to pick everything up and relocate it. I apologized for bean, but she said as far as she was concerned a kid that cute could do whatever she wanted in the store. Bean quickly caught on to the powers of her persuasion with this woman and proceeded to show off. Teeth were flashed, eyelashes were batted and shoes were traded back and forth. Bean then started grabbing from the top shelf ($80 and above toddler shoes) and pulling the price stickers off each shoe. As I frantically tried to match her de-stickering pace with reapplying the sticker,s the very kind and bean-smitten lady said: she can put the price stickers wherever she likes. Since I had no plans to buy anything, I decided we'd better hightail it out of there and I said something like, we'll be back with grandma. The sales girl replied: Come back anytime - you don't need to buy anything. And as we walked out the door, I heard her say to her colleague: "OMG, I want that baby!".
So for every 2 joyless women, there is one kindhearted one that makes you forget about the others.
