About a month ago we started a weekly practice of the older children taking turns going out with me on Saturday morning and staying home with S on the alternate weeks. Usually we go to the Farmer’s Market about ten minutes from us and then to the library. I try not to run a lot of errands but just spend a couple of hours with that child.
This past Saturday it was F’s turn to go and since we had plenty of eggs we decided to go to Carytown instead. For those of you not from RVA Carytown is a section of town with shops and is a good place to walk and people watch. There is a coffee shop there that we like on rainy days since it has an indoor romping area as well as several other stores where we shop semi regularly.
F really likes to go in stores and look at things. He doesn’t usually want to buy them as much as he wants to think about them, why they are the way they are, why they’re displayed the way they are and so on. S has great hopes of being able to discuss pricing theory with him in a few years when his grasp of math is better.
Anyway we started at the top of Carytown and walked down to the end (about seven or eight blocks) only to find that our destination was closed for a private party. We had passed several other coffee shops on our way down so we decided to go to the next nearest one that didn’t look crowded. We ended up here:
We had a very nice cup of coffee and a blueberry scone. It was the last one in the shop and when he overheard us discussing it, another customer very graciously let F have it. Here he is savoring it:
We did a few other things together including going into a toy store that is best described as being for the “upwardly mobile hippy” and instantly reminded me of the Saki story The Toys of Peace.
I think F really enjoyed his expedition and he certainly gave a very detailed account of it to the others when we got home.