A Christmas Shopping Story

So Charlize and I were out Christmas shopping for Kelly a couple months ago.  We went to Barnes and Noble to see if there were any good books for Mommy.  We entered the store on the second floor through the kids section, so I grabbed a book for Charlie to read while I was shopping.

While walking through the store, we got lots of looks.  I guess people have never seen a (then) 15 month old reading in her stroller.  What do they expect her to do in a bookstore?  Just sit there?  Well, apparently, the book was too elementary for her because, as you can see from the pictures, she finished it in a hurry.  She even read it 2 or 3 times.

Well, I was browsing the books and saw one that interested me, even though I was supposed to be shopping for my wife.  I stopped the stroller on the side of that aisle and took a quick look at the book.  (I don’t even remember what it was anymore.)  Since Charlie had already read her book 3 times now (maybe even 4 by this point), she started looking around and found one that looked particularly interesting to her.  She leaned forward in her stroller and grabbed this one off the shelf by herself.  Seriously.  She almost dropped it, but when I saw what she was doing I helped her out.

The book she picked?  Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers.  I’m not sure what interested her most: the interview with Mary Jo Foley or the one with Robert Scoble.  In either case, she really seemed to be attached to this one and had no interest in me putting it back on the shelf for her.

She read this book for a while, but never finished it.  I think it was physically just too heavy for her little hands.  Either that or she got frustrated reading about The Unofficial Apple Weblog.  Eventually, we left it with the first book on a table in the coffee shop after drinking a venti something-or-other and a bottle of Fiji water.  I’m thinking I should add it to her Amazon wish list.

I know I will undoubtedly miss many moments in her life, but I want to keep that to a minimum.  When possible, Kelly and I try to capture as many things on camera as we can so that we always remember those moments that we don’t miss.  And so we can share them with family and friends who don’t get to see her very often.  Thank God for camera phones.