Baby Clarisse is one and a half years old now. Shopping with her tagging along is increasing a chore. The days of her sitting on the trolly quietly is nearly over. She like to walk on her own now but whenever we put her down on her feet, she’d walk everywhere with no regards to direction or where she should be going. She’d wander where she fancies. Stop and fool around with stuff. Taking things off the shelf and putting it somewhere else. She can keep herself occupied doing that forever, drives us nuts to pick her up everytime we need to move on to another section in the store. She’d be wailing and kicking when we carry her of course.

And when she’s in the mood to run about, we have to run along looking out for her as every aisle or corner is a hidden danger. A trolly could be coming straight at her, knock her down and the person who’s pushing the trolly won’t even know what hit them. There’s never a second we could afford to take our eyes off her as it only takes only a turn or corner to get her out of sight.

We’ve tried many times to explain to her she must always stay by our side, don’t run and hold our hands but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. We also reminded her always that wandering away from us, she’d risk getting lost but I guess she’s still too young to realise the gravity of it.