Caleb Adventures at the Post Office

I can't believe it's already Friday! I hope you've all had a great week, and a weekend full of exciting plans ahead. Yesterday was our monthly Letter Writing Club, and I sort of dropped the ball, since I usually try to post about it on the blog to remind everyone. In the spirit of letter writing, and in particular, of how some days it feels like I'm a kid who needs an adult around here to supervise me, I thought I would share a few photos of Caleb at the post office. There's a mailbox outside the post office, but we like to go in so we can visit the mailbox under the counter, which is at Caleb's height. He knows the routine: he drops off the mail, and then pretends to open some of the PO boxes with his keys, while I remind him yet again that we don't have a PO box. One of these days maybe I'll get one for fun, just so he can pick up mail for real. We probably go a few times a week to drop off snail mail, cards + notes, business stuff for the shop, mail from our Letter Writing Club, and the odd package. I'm sort of hoping he'll pick up the snail mail bug, or at least understand the ritual and process of writing mail and sticking it in an envelope and bringing it down to a mailbox. He's even received a few items in the mail, and he loves opening up letters and seeing what's inside - sometimes stickers, sometimes pictures from friends or family. I think having something concrete and physical in his hand at this early age is so important, something for him to hold onto and treasure (at least for a few minutes!), rather than something that can just disappear on a screen. Last week he decided he wanted to ride his little bicycle down to the post office. If you've ever been to the shop, you'll know that the post office is just on Queen at Carlaw, inside the Shoppers, which is about a two minute walk. I thought it was really cute that he was riding his bicycle down the sidewalk, until about five minutes in, when I discovered that he moves about 15 times slower on his bicycle than walking, which is already pretty slow. We made it there, much to my relief, and took a break in the air conditioning to drop off our mail, and roam the sparkling aisles. The ride home was a different story, where he went from very slow to basically not moving and in fact at times moving backwards. His slower speed was also not aided by the fact that he needed to enter into every obstacle he could find, including, but not limited to, bus shelters, ramps into other shops, the soil around trees, dumpster areas, other sidewalks, doorways, automatic sliding doors, pathways to parking lots, medium-large sized bushes, and walls. I had to literally lure him home with Cheese Nips, holding them out a few feet in front of him to come forward to get. I bought them because they were on sale, but it really must have been my spidey-sense tingling in premonition of our pilgrimage half a block home. All in, it took us about an hour and a half to make it there and back. It's truly such an incredible age when you can be this tiny creature moving at a snail's pace, completely oblivious everyone around you, and yet so completely aware of every possible distraction to impede your journey home.