Out For a Walk

[billroper]

daisy_knotwise wanted to go to the fabric store with Julie to use a valuable coupon that was expiring today. I decided to take advantage of her absence to take Katie out for a walk. There's a park about a quarter mile from the house with playground equipment where Gretchen had suggested that we might go sometime, so I figured it wasn't too far to go and you can get there on foot via the schoolyard behind our house and back streets, so I could let Katie walk by herself without having her on the monkey.

Katie was delighted to toddle along with Daddy, although she stubbornly refused to wear her hat. We got to the park and I plopped her in the baby swing. She turned out not to be too happy about this, so I pulled her out of there and she went to investigate the climbing structures with the attached slides. I managed to get her to slide down two of the slides, but she wasn't too enthusiastic about that either. But she enjoyed climbing up and down the wide staircases, so that was a success.

I decided to make a block when walking home, so we headed down LaSalle -- which is what our street would be if it came through. It doesn't, nor were there any possible shortcuts that wouldn't grossly violate someone's backyard. There was, however, a garage sale. I wandered up the driveway with Katie and saw the large number of stuffed animals arrayed there.

The proprietor wandered out from her back door with her own child, not a lot older than Katie. "The stuffed animals are all a dollar or less." Well, it was Sunday. I looked at a large, floppy-eared bunny, picked it up and handed it to Katie, then walked up the driveway and handed the woman a dollar. As I walked back down the driveway, Katie grabbed a large, naked baby doll. I turned around and handed the woman another dollar.

Katie carried the dolls most of the way home, until she handed them to me so she could drink from her sippy cup of iced tea. By the time we got home, she was pretty tired, so I took her upstairs, changed her, and put her in her crib for her nap with the two new dolls.

Later, after Gretchen had returned, I went out to the grocery store to pick up things for dinner and left Gretchen to rescue Katie from her crib. When I got home, Gretchen asked me, "Where did the naked Cabbage Patch Doll come from?"

"Oh. That was a Cabbage Patch Doll?"

"Yes."

"Garage sale. But it was cheap."

So far, Katie has insisted on diapering the doll and trying to feed it some of the corn on the cob from dinner.

We'll see how this goes.