With Silver Bullet away in the weekend on a business trip, I made an impromptu decision to spend the Sunday afternoon with Spud to Siam Ocean World.

I love the idea of taking Spud to the ocean world. It felt like a nice thing to do, and while she may be too young to understand anything, I hope that she’d just enjoy the excursion all the same! If anything at all, at least it was some sort of a contingency plan to keep the both of us occupied for a couple of hours. Not only will it provide some distraction for Spud, but it will also be a key activity to conserve my sanity in case Spud decided to be difficult while I was alone with her.

So, with Spud and the precious tote bag in tow, off we went to Paragon, riding the BTS with every intention to savour a memorable afternoon. I had a nice picture in my head: Just the both of us… mother-daughter bonding, and strolling away blissfully at the basement of Paragon, gawking at sea life. I’d point to her all the interesting things in the oceanarium, and Spud will be so into the sights that she’ll be too distracted to even be cranky.

I had a very nice thought, didn’t I?

That vision, well, remained in my head as my plan went completely off course. What happened was this:

Spud has been squirmy all morning. She resisted being worn, preferring to be on the floor, so by the time we got to Paragon, her patience started to wear thin. With such ants in her pants, I thought the best thing for me to do before we head off to Siam Ocean World was first to try find a place where I could feed her some food, give her some milk and offer her a little bit of freedom without being strapped to me. Sounded like a reasonable plan, right?

Again, that was in my head.

I had to search for a good 20 minutes going from one end of Paragon to the other in search of a place that has a high-chair. And mind you, if you know Paragon, I had to cover quite a distance walking back and forth before ending up at McDonald’s for the 2nd time (I left the first time because the queue was too long!). By the time I finished ordering my Sprite, Spud was decidedly antsy. I was exhausted to say the least, but was glad that I could at least have a drink and place Spud in the Mcd’s high chair. I know for a fact that this would work, since Spud does not usually mind being in a new high-chair (for just a little bit) and especially if she’s being distracted with food. Usually, her patience would last for 10 minutes and I was hopeful that it would work.

She was decidedly happy when I put her down, but as soon as I flipped the food tray that came with the chair right in front of her, she started crying. Quite loud, too.

After a few tries of putting the tray away and putting it back in front of her, I understood the reason.

It turned out that she got scared of the pictures on the tray! And while trying to look away from the tray in front of her, she had inadvertently turned her head to the back of the chair, and immediately got spooked by the image of Ronald McDonald on it! Needless to say, that sent her into a major crying fit and she calmed down only when I took her out and pushed the high-chair out of sight. I ended up feeding her on my lap, instead. She refused to finish her meal, and was in no mood to polish off her milk either.

By the time we left McD, she was quite a cranky little baby. She burst into tears again when she saw the life-sized “wai-ing” Ronald by the door…enough to make me decide that we both were certainly not up for Siam Ocean World that day. [Damn you Ronald McDonald’s and friends]

Instead, despite having no need for any groceries, I hauled both of our sorry asses to the supermarket about 100 meters away from McD and carted Spud around the supermarket in the shopping cart for almost an hour. I don’t know what is with Spud and shopping carts these days, but whatever it was, it kept her spirits up. And, by the time we were done with the shopping cart adventure, Spud was happy again to be worn for us to head home.

So, that was our weekend. Just the both of us; mother and daughter, going round the supermarket with an empty shopping cart, mother chattering away and pulling silly faces to entertain the little imp; baby daughter smiling, laughing and happily blabbering while sitting in the supermarket’s trolley…both completely oblivious to the world around us.