Shopping and Nicholas are two words that you never used to be able to put into the same sentence unless of course oil and water are also used in the same context.

This past Friday night, I took Nicholas grocery shopping. He did not want to sit in the cart – he doesn’t anymore actually. He says the bars hurt his butt. Anyway, we walked around shopping – he talked to me, picked out stuff, put it in the cart and was a perfect little boy. I did not have to carry a tantruming child out of the store. I did not get home with a pounding stress headache. He helped put the groceries on the belt and waited while I paid. I did not have to hold his hand at all – the entire time.

This past Sunday, I took him to go buy a new pair of sneakers. We parked about three blocks away from the store (we parked off of the middle of town where all of the shops are in a pretty big town center.) So, we had to walk to the shoe store and cross 2 pretty busy streets. At times, Nicholas was either next to me or behind me. I did not have to hold his hand with the death grip. You know, the grip you use when you fear your child is going to run into the street and get hit by a car. He walked with me, we talked about things he saw and pointed out and he listened to directions well. We got into the shoe store and had to wait about 20 minutes as they were very busy. He sat and waited patiently the entire time. When the sales person came to measure his feet, he followed directions without having to be asked repeatedly. When I asked him to walk around and tell me how his shoes felt, he did and he came right back on his own. We paid and left and on the way back to the car, we passed a bakery. He said we should go buy a cake so he opened the door and held it open for me. He helped pick out a cake and asked if he could buy an elmo cupcake. We bought the cake and cupcake and headed back to the car. If that’s not a typical child, I don’t know what is!

He ate the Elmo cupcake after dinner – which was surprising because he usually won’t eat stuff like this. But he did and he loved it.

It’s so refreshing to be able to take him places and do things no matter how trivial they are.