The world is a very different place than it was eight years ago when Alexis was Mila's age. Everywhere I look, I see things that have changed. I try not to think about the tough stuff like the police presence that is now standard at Alexis' school. Instead, I try to focus on the funny stuff.
Dora, for example. I'm not sure what the hell happened to her, but her head isn't shaped like a football anymore. She's still annoying, but now she's annoying and ... almost cool looking. Not quite. Almost.
Car seats are different, too.
Mila's infant car seat is pretty much idiot proof, which is a far cry from Alexis' complicated-to-install contraption. It has a little display that tells you that you suck and didn't install it correctly, even. Once I figured out how to work every little button and latch, I have to admit that in this case, newer is better. And easier.
But it is different.
Alexis' car seat could be pulled out of the car and placed in pretty much any shopping cart with ease. It just seemed to fit everywhere. Mila's ... doesn't. We figured that out very quickly when a shopping trip when she was just a few days old left me trying like hell to latch the dumb thing onto anything so that it would be stable.
It couldn't be done.
I know that, so I adapt. If Mila is in her car seat and it is in a shopping cart, I keep one hand on it at all times. It's liable to seem like it's going to tip if I don't, so you just go ahead and try to get me to let go. I WON'T. I'm like one of those people who try to win a car by keeping a hand on the car for days on end. I might be balancing 134214 things in my other hand, but I'm keeping that car seat secure.
This weekend, I ran with the girls to Babies R Us. We needed a couple of things that could only be acquired there, so we cruised up and down the aisles and quickly completed the mission. Somewhere along the way, Mila decided it was dinner time END OF STORY, PEOPLE. She wasn't waiting. So, I picked her up out of the car seat and the three of us went back to the mother's room.
Just as we turned to walk away from the shopping cart with the car seat still in it, KABOOM! The car seat flipped over and plummeted into the back of the cart.
No big deal.
Nobody was even near it, plus I knew I had unhooked the latch when I grabbed Mila. I kind of expected it to tip, honestly.
Apparently the image of a car seat flipping got under Alexis' skin. When we returned to the cart, I fixed everything and set Mila back down, but Alexis started to twitch. She looked at Mila then she looked at me. She looked at Mila again and then said, "Mom, I'll carry her."
"What?" I said. "No, she's fine," I continued as we walked back down another aisle. It took me another minute or two to notice just how panicked Alexis actually was.
I noticed because Alexis went into full-on Nervous Mode. "MOM, IT'S NOT SAFE GIVE HER HERE RIGHT NOW OMGWTFBBQ, WOMAN." She maybe didn't say all of that, but she certainly meant it. Call me crazy, but I consider an 8 year-old carrying a 15-pound baby to be just as nerve-racking as a 15-pound baby in a suspicious car seat situation, so I refused.
Alexis lost her mind.
"MOM, I LOVE THAT BABY AND I WANT HER SAFE," she fussed at me.
We worked the whole thing out to Alexis' satisfaction eventually, but not until I took a moment to fully enjoy watching the best big sister ever prove once again that there is a reason we call her "Grandma Alexis."
