All Things Haley: Growth #26 - Grocery Carts and High Chairs

****** Sorry about the tardiness of this post! Blogger froze up last night right as I was adding all of my meticulously selected photos and wouldn't let me back on. So here is the post I wrote last night before I got kicked out...******

Do you remember the first time you really recognized your baby wasn't a baby anymore? Be it your own child, your niece, your nephew, your god daughter...they all started as these tiny little creatures. These helpless things who truly just ate, slept, and created unreal amounts of bodily fluids nearly every thirty seconds...

And then one day they just weren't anymore. They were up and at 'em, exploring, laughing, playing, taking part in life in so many ways. There have been many moments where I felt that my babies were growing up, usually far too fast. There have also been plenty of moments when I wondered if they would ever be anything but these tiny little babies.

I think today might have been my first day of realization, the first day I noticed my little people as anything other than tiny babies.

Today, was grocery cart day!

We took the littles to lunch, then to the grocery store. I bought a couple of grocery cart and high chair covers a couple weeks ago when I realized that putting a baby in a plain ol' high chair at a restaurant can actually be pretty disgusting. Especially when it's a Grace Face baby who will inevitably suck on any and every part of that high chair that she can reach.

Interestingly enough, it was Caleb's experiences today that created this collective recognition of infants-no-more.

Caleb started getting a bit irritated in his car seat at lunch so we popped him out and put him in the covered high chair. He sat and chilled, playing with the little toy attached to the cover (love that). He didn't need much of anything and was pretty content to just hang out by the table.

But then when we went to the grocery store, he woke up from a mini-nap in the stroller and I'm sure was confused about what was going on and why he had a horrifically poopey diaper. So, after a quick diaper change, we put him in the grocery cart on that cover (ok, it was actually Grace's cover that he was sitting on in the grocery cart...I left his in the car so he was rocking out the pink grocery cart seat...). As I pushed him around the store I revelled at this new freedom from the car seat and standing in the checkout line, I realized that I was one of those moms who was pushing their kid in the cart. My kid is that kid now, the one who can sit in the cart and go along for the ride, taking in the grocery store in all of its wonder and soon reaching for things that he wants.

Of course, my babies aren't exactly all grown yet, either. They're both far from being out of that helpless phase- if it was up to Grace, she'd be rolling all over the ottoman with no regard to where the edge might lie. And, then there's the ever present danger of exactly what she would put in her mouth. With Caleb, that means that Ben and I had to sit him upright in that grocery cart plenty of times after he fell to the side and squirmed awkwardly to avoid hitting his head on the edge of the cart. Ben ended up putting a diaper wipe pail in the cart seat with him to hold him up...so, don't go thinking I'm expecting toddler like feats from these babies. They are still, in fact, babies. They aren't newborns anymore and I don't think I would call them infants (although I still love the term twinfants...), but they're just around the corner from toddler and revving quickly toward full blown kids.

It was a great day today and it was phenomenal to have Daddy back. The babies were beyond happy to see him and I loved hearing Caleb laugh again like he only does for his Daddy. I'm glad Ben and I took the day off just to hang with the littles and soak up those last remaining moments of babiness and those first thrilling moments of kidness.

Pictures from Friday through Tuesday...