This has been a bit of a crazy week.  Peter left Monday morning for a work conference in Florida and didn’t get back until last night.  I’m so glad he’s home and want to give a big thanks to all the babysitters who watched Alethea while I was teaching piano lessons this week.

My main strategy for making it through four days without Peter was to leave our house as little as possible, but I realized on Wednesday morning when we were out of milk, orange juice and chocolate that a grocery run was a must.  So that afternoon, I told Alethea, “You need to get your shoes on.  We are going for a ride in the car.”  Not paying attention to her response, I moved to the kitchen counter to pack my purse.  I minute later I felt a tug on my pant leg.  Alethea holds out one of her shoes and says “Go?”  Yeah, didn’t know she understood that much.

So we get to Target and I’m buckling Alethea into the shopping cart when a little boy and his mom enter the store.  “Mom, Mom! Look at that little girl!” the boy exclaims as he points at Alethea. “She’s SO pretty!”  Wasn’t that sweet?

As we go about gathering our groceries, we get to the yogurt section and I ask Alethea, “Where is your yogurt?  It’s the one with the baby on it.”  Alethea looked around for a few seconds and then pointed right to the YoBaby shelf.  (Having just typed that, it doesn’t sound that impressive.  But I’m her mom, so I get to be excited about things like this.)

Anyway, it turns out that the thing I was avoiding was kind of a fun experience and it really made me realize how much more Alethea understands than what she can communicate.  Plus I got Alethea two tops and two bottoms for a total of $10.50 on the clearance rack, so all in all it was a worthwhile trip.