Today Diane and I took Gilligan, our granddaughter, shopping to celebrate her 5th birthday. She won’t be 5 until October 5th, but since we’re not going to be home it seemed like a good thing to do. The original plan was to take the entire family, but that was ruled out because taking Gilligan and Baylee out in public together is apparently risky. So, we settled on Gilligan alone. By herself.

Grandma brough a festive crown for her to wear, we got her buckled in, and were off.

On the way to the store we stopped for lunch at Ichabod’s where Gilligan ordered a turkey sandwich on wholewheat, “yellow butter only.” When she got it she promptly dismantled it and feasted on the turkey, ignoring the bread. It was OK because this trip was about her, not about proper eating habits.

After eating we trekked on over to Fred Meyer to get Batman’s Jail, her choice from the moment she got into the car. Holding my fingers, she led us up and down a few aisles and finally found it. Not something normal little girls would like, I thought, but she was so excited about it, how could we deny her.

Having that treasure secured, we went to the other end of the store, to the dresses, to satisfy Grandma’s desire to get her something pretty.

Along the way she tried out a lot of the furniture, blessing us with one of her signature poses.

Once there, Gilligan pulled the first dress she saw off the rack and deemed it the one she had to have. It was the prettiest, most expensive, and most inappropriate one in the entire store. She has a knack for this, we decided, and went about the task of altering her decision to include something more appropriate, but still pretty. We found several, explaining that the first choice was one that could only be worn once in a while, but the many others we offered up could be worn for pretty much any occasion. We even tossed in a matching hat.

She delighted in disappearing into the clothes racks, behind us, when we were distracted by the dresses and other pretty things suitable for little girls, bringing to rigid clarity the reason why one at a time was plenty for us old people. Had Baylee been along, we would’ve never kept up. They are busy little people with devious minds. But, she was always close by, and blessed us with her physical presence when asked … sometimes twice.

Finally, she relented, deeming her 2nd choice the better of the two, and we were off to the cashier.

Since she had so much energy, I encouraged her to hop on one foot as we went, which she did for most of the way. Once we got to the produce section she decided to do pushups. I told her to “give me 10,” which she promptly did.

On the way home she decided she’d like to see some cows so Diane drove to the places where cows normally hang out, but there were none to be found. With a sigh, Gilligan determined that cow trappers must have taken all of them and that The Pie Man was in charge. Not sure what the Pie Man reference was it took only a little coaxing the figure out that the Pie Man made cow pies out of the cows provided by the Cow Trappers.

Once home she proudly marched into the house with her treasures, showing her Mom Batman’s Jail before anything else. Heather knowingly said, “Uh huh,” and related that Jeff had recently told Gilligan that she couldn’t have it. This points, once again, to the devious side of things because I’m sure she’s going to look at her Dad with her little head cocked, a gleam in her eye, letting him know that, “yes, she could have it.”