Making shopping fun!

I hear lots of horror stories about shopping with children, especially toddlers.  I suppose we've had a few public meltdowns, but to be honest I suspect most of them were due to unplanned hold ups extending the trip into meal or sleep times.  Geekling has always loved shopping centres - something about the bright lights and vibrant packages on the shelves all vying for attention?  Now that he is mobile, Geekling really enjoys shopping with us, although he often refuses to sit in the trolley or be carried - he wants to walk everywhere!  It slows us down a little, but he takes such delight in it that we certainly don't mind.

One problem we are having is that he wants to pick things up off the shelf and hand them to us (or occasionally try to make a run for it with his new item :).  This has already caused one breakage - although it wasn't Geekling who broke the goods, it was me!  When he went to grab a ceramic mug from the shelf of the $2 shop, I swooped in to stop him, and my handbag swung straight through between my arm and my body and broke one of the very mugs I was trying to save!  I happily paid for it and took the broken cup home to use as crocks in the bottom of a pot so it wasn't wasted, and I certainly was glad we were in a $2 shop rather than somewhere fancy!

We are going to try to involve Geekling a little more in 'helping' with the groceries - we discovered this weekend that the cat food is the perfect height for him to remove from shelves so we let Geekling pick the 5 cans that will feed our family cat (Z) this fortnight.  He did so well! Z is a fussy kitty and will only eat casserole or mince style tinned food, so we did put one of his selected tins back as it was not the right type, and he did chose one in a different brand to our usual that we kept so it will be interesting to see what Z thinks of his selection.

I wonder what other aisles have products we buy at his height?