Like Mommy

Taking Nathan to the market has never been the easiest thing. He hates to sit in the cart, prefers to be carried, and when he consents to walk he seems to have a knack for finding the largest heaviest and most delicate things to pull off the shelf and wave around. So there we were, on a weekend afternoon, and I needed just a few things for dinner and Nathan wanted to "come too".
He had been playing with one of my evening bags, (seen here it all its satiny beaded glory) and about 15 cents he had scrounged up from around the floor and end tables.
Unzip the bag. Change goes in. Laboriously zip the bag. Unzip the bag. Change tinkles out. Bag closed again. All with extreme concentration and amusing exclamations of difficulty and success.
Because he is an excellent negotiator and I am quite frankly a sucker for his tactics he wheedled into not only going to the market but also taking his "purse".
(Daddy's disapproving look is cropped out of these photos.)
I made a token effort at leaving it in the car and when that predictably failed, I just knotted the string so it wouldn't drag on the ground and put in on his shoulder.
And wasn't he an eye catcher in the store. He paraded about, walking next to me, not grabbing anything or asking to be carried. He occasionally stopped, unzipped his bag and volubly counted the coins inside. Sometimes he removed one to show off but usually after he took inventory he simply zipped it back up and kept on walking.
He drew a lot of commentary, most of it charmed, some of it vaguely disparaging. This is, after all, Western Pennsylvania.
He had a ball. I had an easy outing. And the bag? Well, it did loose a few beads but I've had it since high school and they sure weren't Swarovski.