2004-11-24, 11:30 p.m.

I've been chasing after a small shrieky child, and I'm tired.

Next year, remind me not to go shopping the day before Thanksgiving. I have never seen so many shopping carts in the baking-products aisle of Meijer as I did today. And it is a LONG and WIDE aisle. Yeesh. I could barely maneuver my own cart between all of the middle-aged women and their piles of last minute holiday baking products, in search of my own last minute cans of pumpkin puree and evaporated milk. I felt like I was in some movie set up - it just seemed too stereotypical to be true. There were plenty of non-middle-aged women (and men) in the store, but only middle-aged women in the baking aisle. What the heck was that about?

It's actually pretty interesting to study people and things at Meijer - it's like this anthropological slice of Michigan life. For instance, the woman in front of me in the check out line was buying 4 tubs of Cool Whip. Why does anyone need that much Cool Whip? She wasn't buying any of the other usual Thanksgiving products - just a case of diet coke, a 12 pack of paper towels, and the 4 tubs of non-dairy dessert topping. My imagination is really having a field day with that one. And last week I discovered that not only are the Meijer bathrooms an official Tornado Shelter Area (um, we get tornados?), but the women's bathroom is equipped with a disposable diaper dispenser! For $1.00 you get: 1 large diaper, 1 hygienic wipe, 1 plastic bag, and 1 changing pad. I have never seen that before, anywhere, and I think it's a pretty brilliant idea. Although if your baby's not a 'large', or you need more than one wipe, you're out of luck. I've also discovered that it's frustratingly difficult to find 'funny' birthday cards out here that are neither fart jokes nor "you're how old?!?" jokes. They're just not that funny, people. Nope. Not funny.

Moving onto sunnier things, in the world of growing babies Leon seems to be entering the classic stage of exploring and getting into everything, and then needing desperately to rush back to mama and be held tight, for about 10 seconds, before he's off on another discovery. He still hasn't figured out how to coordinate his knees in what is universally recognized as a crawl, but that hasn't stopped him from becoming the incredible vertical baby, able to pull himself up to a standing position using almost any tall object. Today I watched him work for about 3 minutes to pull himself up on the TV table - he really was working, trying out different approaches. When he finally did manage to plant his feet right and pull himself up, he let out a happy burble, and then proceeded to examine the buttons across the front. Before long, he'll know how to turn it on, which is rather terrifying. But, the only channel we actually get is the 24 hour Born Again Christians Preaching and Witnessing channel, and since they don't yet market little plastic toys that come in happy meals, at least he won't be begging us for all the commercial tie-ins.