Out in Public

Lily and I were out running a few errands the other day which is usually entertaining.  People lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve to stop and talk to her! Now that she says, "hi" 9385712304 times a day, she is actually the one engaging people.  It makes me laugh.

We were looking at some clearance baby stuff in Target and an older woman stopped to look at the same endcap and Lily immediately started, "hi" "hi". The woman smiled and said "hi" back while she continued  browsing the items. Lily kept on..."hi" "hi" "hi" "hi".  The woman replied about 3 times and I laughed while I said, "She'll say it about 900 times, so please don't feel you have to say it each time."  She laughed and said to Lily, "How old are you?"  I repeated to Lily and said, "How old is Lily?"  Lily obliged and held up her finger to show she's one.  The woman smiled, said, "Wow! She's smart."

That's a pretty typical interaction.  Pleasant, makes me smile.  Always lots of "She's so cute, she's adorable, wow is she smiley, I love her headband..."

We've been cracking up at Lily's fake laugh all the time! It gave me another type of laugh at Target the other day as we turned a corner and walked in front of a woman (my age) and Lily chose that moment to fake laugh.....in a way as if we'd been making fun of the woman!  I just shook my head, smiled and said, "She fake laughs."  Her husband was standing there with the buggy and a newborn and started cracking up.  It was funny, but I can see Lily is going to be just like Andrew when we were out in public.  You know, the once in a blue moon time we'd go to hell Walmart, be in line and a man was standing behind us in line with NO shoes on (gross) and my then 2 year old son nearly shouted, "Mama, he's not being safe. He needs shoes!"

Yeah, Lily's gonna do that too. I just know it. ;)

We finished up and headed back to the car.  I put her in the carseat, loaded the trunk and lo and behold I had a buggy still.  I had pulled through the parking spot, so I was going to be able to just pull out instead of backing out.  While I was putting Lily in the seat, a woman pulled in next to me, so our driver's doors were right next to each other. She waited until I was finished with Lily because my door was in her way, so she kind of huffed when she got out of the car. 

As I put the buggy almost touching my car in between spots, but ensuring that the wheels were turned so the buggy would NOT roll into any car, she looked at me and disgustingly said, "Are you just going to leave that there?"  I replied, "Yes."  She scoffed. To which I replied, "Well, I'm certainly not going to leave my baby in the car alone to walk back to the store with it."  She huffed again as she was walking away toward the storeand yelled, "Then you SHOULD HAVE TAKEN HER WITH YOU AND NOT PUT HER IN THE CAR!"

I simply said, "Thanks for the advice....stranger."

When I got to Target, I actually got the buggy  from the same place I was leaving it.

 And for the record, huffing lady--the ONLY time I leave the buggy near my car is when I just have Lily.  Andrew is my buggy returner and if I'm alone I ALWAYS, without fail, return it.  When it is just Lily and myself, I try to park right next to the cart corral, but that day it just didn't happen. Often I take people's buggies for them if they're done with their shopping and I'm just going in to the store. I've had people offer to take my buggy back for me as they're going in and I've finished up.  I don't typically have buggy issues. Huffing lady apparently just felt entitled to tell me what I should be doing.

I much prefer the pleasant shopping exchanges. :)

This whole exchange prompted me to think, "What do other people do with their buggies?" in various scenarios. Clearly I am not the only person to leave one in a parking lot.  I'm not the buggy police, nor does it make me a lesser person because I occasionally leave my buggy in the parking lot.

What do you do?