Becoming Obsolete

I've been taking G to the supermarket since she was little. But riding around in the trolley seat just doesn't cut it anymore. Recently, she's insisted on walking alongside me as I go around the shop, looking out for her favourite foods (the way she homes in on the six packs of own brand yoghurt is quite something).

The other day I turned around to find her doing this. Admittedly, she struggled to move it very far or very fast, and if I'd left her to it I suspect we'd still be going up and down the yoghurt aisle. But it's just another sign I'm becoming a bit obsolete. Not sure whether G will take to doing the washing up quite so easily, but I can always give it a go.

Wellies Indoors

We went to Mothercare yesterday to pick up a new car seat. This being one of those parenting jobs that can only be described as tedious, I let Mrs J poke around all the options while I took G to the little playing area in the corner of the shop.

You'll notice that G insisted on wearing wellies ("No shoes! Wellies!"), even though we were indoors and it was dry outside anyway. Perhaps she knows that wellies are about to become an essential fashion item for summer 2012. And when I say 'fashion' I obviously mean 'necessary due to constant threat of rain'.

Shopping Bag

Keen to get out of the house today despite the cold weather, I ended up taking G over the Pennines to Slaithwaite, to pick up a few bits and bobs from the Green Valley Grocer. I gave G the basket as I scoured the shelves for something for tonight's tea. When I put everything into the shopping bag, G insisted on carrying it and took it down the street, as shown in the picture.
Predictably, this didn't last very long. The bag was a bit on the heavy side for her, and we were making very slow progress on what was a freezing cold afternoon. So I ended up carrying both G and the bag back to the car. Soon she'll be too heavy for that. But, unfortunately for me, not quite yet.

A Vision Of The Future

When you have a young child, sometimes you look at them and get a glimpse of what they'll look like when they're much older. Quite by chance, I caught one of these moments on camera the other day when we were in a shop, and I've reproduced the photo here.

Even though G is only 20 months old, I think she looks alarmingly grown up in this picture. In fact, I can imagine seeing a similar face for many years to come, staring back at me and making unreasonable demands, such as asking to borrow the car.

At least when I tell her she can't do something now, she usually forgets about it within a few seconds, so her tantrums never last very long. But I know that when I inform the 17-year-old G that she has to take the bus, I'll be unleashing several days of moping. Having a toddler rather than a teenager does have its advantages.

Every Little Helps

I haven't been to the supermarket much since G was born. This is mostly because we live close to local shops including a butcher and a greengrocer, so I tend to get most of our food there. Anything else we usually order online and get delivered. But when I realised this morning that we didn't have any milk or spread left, I decided to take a detour via the nearest Tesco on the way home from this morning's parent and baby group.

And so, G got to have a go in the trolley. I hadn't realised quite how exciting this would be for her. She laughed and squealed with delight from the moment I strapped her in, and carried on all the way around the shop. She was enjoying herself so much I ended up buying loads of stuff that I hadn't intended to, including a packet of custard creams. It only cost 9p though.

At the baby group one of the mums was proudly showing off her five week old boy. Looking down at the little bundle, then across at G, I struggled to remember exactly what G was like when she was that size. In fact, she's always been such a big baby, I'm not convinced she was ever that small.

Due Date, But No Sign Of Baby

Baby was supposed to arrive today. These things aren't an exact science, and apparently only 5% of little ones are actually born on their due date, but even so this is a day that's been staring at us from the calendar for months, covered in red circles and exclamation marks. So it's a bit of a shame that it's been an anti-climax. I'd kind of hoped that baby would be born with an inherent sense of punctuality. However, as the photo demonstrates, she remains resolutely inside Mrs J's tummy, so it looks like she's inherited her dad's tardiness if nothing else.

There were plenty of moments this weekend when I could see my future life unspooling before me, though. In the old days, and providing I wasn't at work, by 3 o'clock on a Saturday I'd have spent several hours surviving on little more than paracetamol and bacon sandwiches, and would have reached the sofa in time to spend a couple of hours with Jeff Stelling firing largely meaningless football statistics at me. Yesterday at 3 o'clock I was in Mothercare. Then we went on to B&Q. Today I watched the first half of the Manchester derby, but we were on our way to Ikea during the second half, although I did manage to make the process of parking the car last an inordinately long time so I was able to listen to the barely believable end of the game on the radio.

I took a close interest in the United-City match partly because I like football, but mostly because I've always had a vague sense that it's important to know about what's going on in the city where you live, and that includes football. I was in Leeds during their run to the Champions League semi-final in 2001, and it definitely gave the place a lift. There was an exciting atmosphere around the city on match days, and you could feel it in Manchester today. It was certainly different to the derby that took place the day after I first moved to Manchester in 2006, a match which probably nobody remembers much about. City were pretty rubbish back then, and nobody had any idea that soon they'd be the richest club around thanks to mega-rich backers from Abu Dhabi. From now on, it's likely both United and City will be among the biggest and best teams in the world, which gives Manchester a prestige lacking in similar cities such as, well, Leeds come to think of it. If we end up living either in or around Manchester for years to come, our daughter's going to have an exciting place to grow up in. Whether she likes football or not.