I love Target. It opens at 8am, usually has a Starbucks with highchairs and sells cheap baby clothes. Wal-mart is fine too, although I do have to drive past two target stores to get to the nearest one, and it has no Starbucks. It also lacks that certain bright and shiny Targetness that makes Target the pretty preppy girl of discount mega stores.
My baby loves Target too. She mainly loves it because it helps keep her mommy sane and caffeinated. My daughter loves her mama, her dog, her oatmeal and anything new. I have given her a second middle name… Eager. And, as soon as she could focus on things more than eight inches from her face she was eager for new surroundings. Target has provided this for her at every developmental stage of her first year.
As a newborn the absolute best way to take your baby to Target is in a Moby. Okay so there is a small learning curve with the Moby, which is basically a whole bolt of knit fabric that you wrap around yourself in a specific way. But, once your tiny one is all snuggled up next to your heart (and between her two best friends) it’s just like being back inside. Your hands are free and so is your basket.
I also liked taking my newborn in her stroller, especially if I didn’t have a lot of shopping to do or if I wanted to sit and have some coffee while she napped. I did have the baby carrier/car seat/stroller combo monstrosity, which came in handy when she fell asleep in the car, but I was hesitant to perch her carrier on top of the cart like I see so many other parents doing. Perhaps I have an odd shaped carrier, but mine just never seemed secure. We spend so much time making sure our super safe car seats are welded to the frame of our super safe car, and that they are buckled in using a 170 point indestructible safety harness, but we wheel infants around in carriers balanced on rickety shopping carts? Invest in a baby sling or harness, your little one will like it better anyway.
When she started realizing what she was missing when she fell asleep in the stroller or in her Moby we flipped her around to face the front, and she discovered a whole new Target world out there. Instead of looking at Mama’s shirt or staring at the ceiling she was seeing colorful signs and shelves full of strange objects and most interesting of all, the smiling faces of her adoring public.
My daughter is not shy. She loves people, and she expects them to love her too. So coaxing smiles and waves from the other Target customers entertained her to no end at this age. I did find that I had to start sharing my coffee time with her at this point. She no longer napped in her stroller so I pulled her up to the table and let her play with a toy or rocked the stroller back and forth while I chugged my latte. Sometimes being still was not acceptable, and I had to drink and shop, but I enjoyed sharing Target with her for the first time. I also changed from a Moby to a Baby Bjorn around this age. It was easier to get on and off than the Moby, and she fit well facing front. I wore her when I needed to have a cart, and I pushed her in her stroller when I just needed a few things (or just needed to get out of the house and stroll around for a while.)
The wondrous world of Target changed forever when she finally learned to sit up. She could now ride in the cart! The first time we put her in the seat was one of my favorite memories. She was so amazed. We did have a period of transition where she would spend some time in the Bjorn and some time in the cart, but this didn’t last for long. She could now lean towards unsuspecting strangers to demand their attention, attempt to grab breakable items from nearby shelves and, most fun of all, she could reach up and pat Mommy’s boobies reassuringly whenever the whim struck her.
She also started eating solid foods at this stage and sitting in highchairs. So, now while I drank my latte she would get a snack as well. This made the Starbucks portion of our Target excursions more fun again. We enjoyed sitting and meeting other Target Mommy and baby pairs as well as watching and pointing at the people coming and going.
And so her first year was almost over when the next big developmental leap made for an even bigger change in our Target ritual. My baby became a toddler. I believe I mentioned before that I had my daughter’s middle name changed to Eager. It’s not quite as pretty as the one she had before, but it certainly fits. She walked early and with enthusiasm.
This was the point in our Target experience that the bargain aisle at the front of the store became Toddler Utopia. Let’s face it, toddlers love little colorful things that look like they shouldn’t be touching. Fortunately, the dollar sale bins are usually filled with stuff like packs of ugly thank you cards, plastic toy cows and rainbow colored ping pong balls. Almost everything is small enough to pick up, large enough not to be swallowed and cheap enough to be bought if broken. She rarely spent enough time with any one object to be destructive since there was an overabundance of new and interesting items to touch, pick up and leave on the floor for Mama to scoop back into the bins. She also took this opportunity to run up to strangers and announce, “Dixie!” (dith-ee). Dixie is the name of our dog. Usually after bargain bin play time she was better able to sit and ride in the cart as I did my shopping.
As her one year birthday arrived she picked up a few fun and socially graceful habits that made shopping much more interesting such as pointing and laughing at people who walk funny, farting like her father, making fun gasping noises while inhaling, trying to stick her hand down the front of Mama’s shirt and reaching into the back of the cart and tossing items at passing customers. I usually just smile, apologize to any offended party and continue on my meandering way. I’m sure the next year will require many more changes in our Target shopping tactics but as for now, I’m sane and caffeinated and a happy Mama. See you on the diaper aisle.
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