Alexis has been in nothing short of a phenomenal mood for the past few days. As with all one-year olds, that means she has been engaged in an absolute flurry of activities. The running, jumping, running, squealing, running, jumping, running, giggling, and running have gone on and on and on. She's been like the Energizer Bunny, if only he were to drink WAY too much caffeine so as to seem as if he was acting in fast forward motion.

Today's activities included lunch at Costco (What? You don't manage to make a meal out of the free samples? Well, you should.), a few stops to try and locate a Halloween costume suitable for the hyperactive one (a monkey? a butterfly? a princess? I still don't know!), and some browsing of really fun toys at various electronic stores. We do these things without giving second thought to the fact that our child is pushing the cart, running up and down the aisles, screeching at the top of her lungs, dancing on top of any surface she can mount, and generally making the best of whatever her current situation may be. She's enjoying herself, and so we sort of just go about our business.

It was while she was pretending to be Mary Lou Retton on the uneven bars (also known as Daddy) that we needed to engage in a conversation with a young man at Best Buy. This young man obviously was not accustomed to children that suddenly scream with delight, sing random and generally incoherent lyrics, hang upside down, clap their hands, and declare, "Hi, I'm Crackers!" He seemed a bit . . . what's the word . . . SCARED TO DEATH. Which, of course, made the situation all the more funny. As he tried to focus on the adults' questions with his ears and brain, his eyes were clearly focused on the three ring circus in front of him. He could not stop staring and grimacing. He probably was praying silently that Alexis wouldn't suddenly start using him as her form of entertainment. If she had so much as made eye contact, I'm sure he would have sprinted out the front door of that store so fast he would have been nothing more than a blue blur.

We rewarded him by purchasing a really fun toy, and left him with a story that I'm sure he'll repeat several times in the next few weeks. It will probably become known as the Reason He's Not Having Kids.