Thursday walkies

Up at Parenting.com today I have written about Feeding! A Timeline! Of Annoyances!. Only without the exclamation points. I'm feeling sort of kicky this morning.

Maybe because the boy has FINALLY started walking? He was taking three or four steps at a time before we all got hammered with the stomach bug, and that seemed to put him out of commission for at least a week and a half. (See: recent woe-is-me posts containing 97 instances each of the word "whine".) He wasn't really getting back into the walking swing of things either, not until his birthday party when he had an AUDIENCE cheering his every little MOVE.

You will have to trust me on this one. Let's hope our parents got better pictures than we did.

So. I KNOW. What a HAM. Then someone had the great idea of giving him the strings of two helium balloons to hold (oh yes, hats AND balloons, I throw a rockin' good time people) and it was like he thought he was holding on to something, so he walked all across the room! Amazing! And now he is a little walking fiend. He walks just because he can. And also because I have opened the pantry door and oooh, boxes of cereal and half used bags of chocolate chips!

(What? Maybe I had to USE half. Don't automatically assume I ATE half.)

(Although you would be correct.)

I am enjoying this new walking thing. When I bring him downstairs to put shoes and coats on, I can just stand him up instead of feeling guilty about sitting him down on the never cleaned entry way floor. And the So Proud of Me! look he gets on his face is priceless. We are also practicing watering the flowers. I fill up my pink elephant watering can about a fourth of the way, hand it to him and we are off to water the primroses and petunias and the geraniums still sitting in their Home Depot cardboard box. He loves this. When my back starts to hurt and I'm ready to go back inside, he whiiiiines and takes the elephant over to the faucet because THERE IS MORE WATERING TO BE DONE!

I don't have a picture of that either. Sigh.

Anyway! I was pleasantly surprised to note that all of you feel as passionately about your grocery stores. For the record, I might be willing to switch grocery situations with Italy if I also had bars and gelaterias and giant Saturday markets where you can buy produce and cheese and meats AND some skimpy underwear at the same time.