Of all the joys of getting older, being a Baba to my girl gang is one of the best. I love spending time with them and getting to know their personalities. I had the particular joy yesterday of taking my eldest Little Explosion shopping for wellie boots and slippers for playing outside and inside when she visits.
The shopping was easy and the salesman engaged with LE beautifully. It helped, of course that there were a range of choices in the wellie boot display. Not that it mattered as LE was completely focused on one particular pair – dinosaur boots! Luckily they fitted as she was determined there were no second choices. The same criteria were applied to slippers! And so it came to pass that dino boots and slippers were purchased! My only disappointment was they didn’t come in matching adult sizes!
Any shopping trip worth its name has to have a coffee-and-cake break so we stopped at a cafe where I had a tea and croissant and she had a juice and easter biscuit. This particular cafe, a well known chain, had wallpaper showing various stages of coffee production. LE let her imagination go wild and imbued each person portrayed with a characteristic. There were mummies and daddies, teachers, workers and bad guys! One ‘bad guy’, a woman in a business suit, had, she informed me ‘stolen all the money’. Luckily there were also ‘policemen’ in the tableau who were going to put her on the naughty step until she saw the error of her ways! I love how imaginative she can be. Her stories are now becoming more detailed and inventive!
After our break we were walking back through the shopping centre towards the car park. Suddenly LE announced that the floor was lava! Baba needed a lot of encouragement to avoid the dangerous lava tiles on the floor. There was jumping involved! First only the green tiles were lava, then the white tiles! Soon it was only safe to walk on the black ones! It was an adventurous and joy-filled shopping expedition and I can’t wait to do it again.
Significantly Different 