Hold my Hand?

William is growing and growing. Usually when we go somewhere, I take William out of his car seat and carry him into the store. As quickly as possible, I try to stow him in a cart before he either wiggles away of becomes so heavy I start paring my list down to the bare essentials (1 loaf of bread in any condition and a container of milk of any variety or size). In conjunction with the heaviness, he has also begun to entirely loath the riding in the cart. It is rare that he will park his behind in the kid section of the cart and allow himself to be buckled in without a sweet bribe to distract him (crackers anyone?). And there better be plenty of the bribe to make it through the store because otherwise he will choose an inopportune time to wiggle out of the safety belt and try to stand up almost falling over onto his head. Somehow over the last few weeks, he has become so much more heavy (I don't think it is all him. Part of it is me - I'm tired) that even that walk to the store is becoming a challenge. So, I'm letting him walk more - as long as he holds my hand. So far, so good. The cutest part is that he will stop and wait for me (I know that this waiting stuff is only going to last so long) with his hand outstretched. He'll say "Hold hand mama?". Very sweet - how can I refuse?

On Friday night, it was cool and we were looking to get out of the house for a little while. We elected to take a short walk through the neighborhood. We rolled the stroller out and locked up the house. William entertained us by attempting to put the brakes on the stroller while using his feet. Quite difficult when the brakes are at the same level as your armpits. We put William in the stroller where he proceeded to do his slippery fish/stiff as a board routine. After a few minutes of the neighbors discreetly checking on us, we gave up on buckling him in and started walking. He was thrilled to be holding John's hands and kept commenting as we walked "Hold hand Dada?" Even more cute was that when other walkers/bikers/scooterers needed to come through, John would move over to the grass to let them through. William would have none of it. If Daddy was going to walk on the grass, so was William. If Daddy slowed to look at a tree/car/something, William would need to stop to examine it carefully as well. I decided to push the stroller for the walk as I was certain he wasn't going to be able to walk the whole way. He sure proved me wrong! He walked the whole time - it probably took us an hour to do a 15 minute walk, but he walked it all without complaint, holding John's hand the entire time...