Shopping with Sadie

I have finally finished my Christmas shopping (I think).  It took longer than I thought it would, mostly because shopping with Sadie is kind of exhausting.  When we go into stores Sadie is carried in one of two ways: in the baby bjorn or in the little pink jeep stroller.  She isn't quite steady enough to sit in the shopping cart yet.  When placed in the little pink stroller, Sadie is quite a sight.  She immediately grabs her toes, leans back and blows raspberries at every single person that we come across.  When she's in the baby bjorn she keeps her arms raised straight out to the sides and squeals non-stop.  Every time we walk by another shopper she squeals.  Today Sadie added cooing and babbling to the squeals and we actually started drawing little crowds of people who would come over to talk to her.  In Costco we stopped traffic (we weren't quite as popular as the mini brownie bites).  There were a few other memorable shopping moments today.

1) In Chipotle I put Sadie in one of the high chairs to see if she was big enough (and had enough control) to sit in it.  I put her little blanket around her sides and back for added stability.  She was next to Nani who had been holding her.  She spent most of the meal trying to convince us that she was starving to death and NEEDED a bite of burrito, although she had just eaten about half an hour earlier.  She also tried to convince anyone who walked by the table that we were starving her.  When Nani took a bite of her burrito and looked away for a split second she leaned forward and started licking the table.  Apparently we are not ready for the high chair just yet.  

2) Every time we go to Redding we stop by the memory care facility that my grandmother lives in.  It really cheers everyone up there to see a baby and she seems to have a calming effect on some of the residents.  However I think that she frightened her Great Grandma a bit when Hoho (that's our name for her) gave Sadie her finger to hold and Sadie gripped it as hard as she could and lunged forward in an attempt to get the finger into her mouth.  Today Hoho was a little more cautious when she held the baby's hand.  (I also couldn't stop laughing when one of the workers walked by and heard Nani tell Hoho that Sadie is going to be six-months old this Sunday.  He stopped, looked at the baby in surprise and said "she certainly is a good size, isn't she?"  Yes.  Yes she is.)

3) Sadie's new car seat leaves very little room in the front passenger seat, so I volunteered to sit up there for the first part of the trip.  When we got to Target, Nani put her in her stroller while I ran into the ladies room.  When I came out and found Grumpa pushing Sadie around the store she looked shocked to see me.  She really hadn't realized that I was there.  For the rest of our trip through Target she kept craning her head to look straight up to make sure I was still there (I should point out that I've only been away from her twice since she was born six-months ago, neither time for more than an hour!  But she definitely seemed to think that I'd disappeared and that I was going to disappear again.).  

So that was our day in Redding in a nut shell.  Sadie was so exhausted from all the socializing that she passed out in her car seat and slept all the way home.  I didn't even have to sing rubber ducky twenty-times!