Normally one would think, "Costco, on a Sunday, right at back-to-school time? Are you nuts?" And one would be right. But silly us, we ran out of half gallons of half-and-half and two-pound packs of the good butter, so we loaded up the family truckster, picked up the toddler for good measure, and headed out to face the throngs. It was as packed as one would imagine, and at first it made Papa tense and snippy. But rolling through the sample carts, trying to convince a two-year-old to taste new things flooded his brain with feel-good chemicals, and he calmed down. I think it helped that Valerie kept up a running commentary the whole time, holding court from her seat in the top of the cart. By halfway through the venture, he was showing up with giant bags of cheese and caramel popcorn to feed her on the way home, and letting her choose which kind of grapes we would buy to honor her request. The best part was him trying to teach her how to say "mozzarella," and her sort of getting close, but not replicating his terrible attempt at an Italian pronunciation. I'm not sure, but she might have been playing him by the end of the interaction.
Her cognitive skills thrill the heck out of me. She keeps coming up with astute observations about the world around her. It makes me wish I wasn't so exhausted by parenting her mother and auntie at that age that I couldn't imprint solid memories of them doing the same things. Her ability to re-enact movie scenes is improving. The lines from her favorite scene in Frozen are much clearer and easier to recognize. We listened to Hamilton on the way down, as I still hope to get her hooked on the tunes, what with her loving the other musicals by LMM. She seemed to have an idea what I was telling her when I said, do you know who is singing this song? That's Kristoff. She repeated enough back at me, that I think she understood.
She stayed here long enough to watch all of Frozen and nap after once we were done shopping. I get her most of tomorrow too. I wonder whether she will let me try the visuals for Hamilton as our nap intro movie. It's worth an attempt.
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