Shopping With Maddie

Maddie is my great-niece, and is 2 1/2 years old.  She is a delight (most of the time) to her mother, and her grand-parents. 

I'm not much of a child person, although little ones seem to like me.  I've always thought of it as the same thing as if you, a dog hater, enter a house with a dog, and the dog won't leave your side.  Or the dog just continually humps your leg. 

Something about the lack of cooing and attention makes them like you.

Did I tell you how smart Maddie is?  She knew all of her colors well before most children, and can count to 10 with ease.  In fact, I'm pretty sure she can count to 100 in Spanish but doesn't want to show off.

Maddie and her Mom came over to my camper last weekend 'cuz they were bored.  So I gave Maddie a straw tote bag I use to carry my beach towels in, and said "let's go to the Market". 

She put the tote bag on her shoulder and followed me around the camper.  We stopped, and I said, "should we get a tomato"?

She said yes, so I handed her a tomato from the counter.  We walked some more, and I asked "how about some garlic to go with that tomato"?

She thought that might be nice, so I gave her a head of garlic.  We collected a couple of potatoes, a pepper grinder, and an onion on our trip.  Later, I asked her what we had in the bag to make supper with.  I asked her "do we have a tomato"?  She pulled out a tomato.  I said that we needed an onion and some garlic to go with the tomato, so she correctly pulled those out too. 

Now I know that everyone thinks that their child/grandchild/niece/great-niece is smarter than average (certainly prettier than average, since she looks like me).  But I think that next summer I'm going to teach her to cook for real.  When she's much much older she can look back and remember the times she spent with Auntie Sandy going to the market and using the ingredients we collected to make a delicious supper.