In the driver's seat

It's getting harder to take Sophie places.

We now understand what people mean when they say that newborns are more portable than 18-month-olds.

One reason it is harder to take Sophie places, is that immediately upon seeing the car, she wants to get the door open so that she can climb into the driver's seat and play with the windshield wipers, mirrors, emergency brake, horn (honk!), cup holders and handles that do there reside.

Maybe it's the fact that her car seat is positioned in the center of the rear seat, where she can watch us drive and co-drive.

Another reason it is hard to take her places is that she wants to pull everything down from the shelves. The other day, at My Urban Toddler (where pulling things from shelves is not such an issue), she walked along a low shelf literally sweeping everything to the floor. She even stopped to make sure she had gotten all the pieces of the puzzle out before proceeding on. Like she was some miniature mafioso making a point about protection money. "Next time you pay up, see? Or I let my baby loose in your fine establishment with a stick. So's she can reach the high up breaky things, see? You got a lotta nice breaky things here. It'd be a shame to get them, you know, broke."