Then & Now (Part 1)

We thought a little "Then and Now" leading up to Gavin's first birthday would be fun. Here's the first installment.

THEN: 6 days old - Daniel and I took Gavin on his first errand, to Target. We packed a full diaper bag with 2 changes of clothes for the less than 20 minute expedition, secured Gavin in the Moby wrap, and headed inside the store. That is when disaster struck. A stranger met us four feet in the door and despite learning that he was 6 days old (i.e. still fragile, breakable, and ridiculously susceptible to the world's germs) she pulled back the Moby so she could see his face and rubbed his cheek. I was horrified. We pushed forward - we needed exactly four items (cannot remember what four items were so important now, but I know we needed four). Somewhere about the first aisle, I started to worry that the fluorescent lights were hurting Gavin's eyes because he seemed to be squinting and going cross-eyed even more than usual. Somewhere about the third aisle, I started to worry that we had not secured the Moby tight enough because Gavin was starting to wiggle. Somewhere about the seventh aisle, Gavin had had enough and started crying. (It was just a weak newborn cry, but at the time it seemed like the loudest, most emotional, and emotion-evoking sound ever. Hey, we were new to all of this.) We had only two of our four items, but we decided to divide and conquer (something we have now mastered). I headed back to the car with Gavin, and Daniel forged ahead. Still shaken and worried that we were baking in the car, Daniel quickly threw the third item on our list into the basket and then the fourth and headed to the checkout. As he went to unload the basket, however, he realized that somewhere between item three and item four he had snagged someone else's basket. Too bad. He bought our one item and ran to the car. We walked back into the house and thought, wow, we're never braving the outside world again.

Now: 6 months old - Because Gavin had been so content on the road trip back from San Antonio (about 75 miles south of Austin), Daniel and I decided to stop at Ikea (about 20 miles North of Austin). It was holiday season and the store was packed. We leisurely shopped for house furniture for a couple of hours, sans diaper bag, snacks, or toys. As we waited in line at the check out, Gavin noticed a pit of stuffed soccer balls that I can only imagine were touched by every single kid that was dragged to the store during the month of December (aka the month of runny noses, etc.). We threw him right in and he loved it, take a look.