raising a good little consumer

Gavin loves to go shopping. He pretend shops at home, saying "ok bye! back!" as he hoists a purse up onto his shoulder or pushes his shopping cart. Then he runs back toward me, shouting "oh no! money!" So I give him some "money" and he goes shopping and disappears around a corner. A minute or so later he walks around the corner and says "back. missed you." Then we talk about what he bought (usually cookies, sometimes broccoli), and after that the whole process begins anew.

Last night we went to Whole Foods, where they have the small kid sized shopping carts. I decided he could probably handle pushing a cart, as he isn't quite as prone to running away from me anymore. He was thrilled. Thrilled. I had him help me put the items into the cart that we were buying. Soon he was walking up to shelves and displays and looking at them critically. Then he clearly made a decision to either buy or not. When he wanted it, he would pick it up and say "Buy" as he put it into the cart. Naturally these were random things - jars of capers, bags of expensive croutons, a carrot, lemons, boxes of cereal.

Today we were in a store buying a birthday present for a friend's baby who just turned a year old. I was deliberating over a couple of toys and looked over to find that Gavin, who was standing in the back of the cart, pulling one plastic toy truck after another off the shelf and dropping it into the cart. "Buy!" he exclaimed as he dropped in a dump truck. "Buy!" and in went a school bus. "Buy!" as he added a bulldozer. Oh dear. What a good little consumer I've created. Ay yai yai.