Few things seem to impress our 18 month old.

Yes she screams “boom” when she sees the balloons floating above the flower boutique at the grocery store. I thought this was her attempt to pronounce the word balloon until just now when I am realizing she is likely afraid that one of them is going to pop and scare her out of the cart.

She enjoys playing with her sisters and occasionally giggles when they chase her faster than her sturdy, little legs can carry her down the hall towards a toy but that usually ends with some or all of them in a tangled heap and copious amounts of tears.

I recently purchased a tiny watering can shaped like a duck thinking this might impress her but she became enraged when I filled the duck with water and retaliated by pouring the water all over her shirt and pants, filling her running shoes before tossing it but not before looking at me with one merged angry eyebrow and shouting, “NO!!!!”

So yesterday seemed the right time to cave and give her what she wanted when she started convulsing while in the toy aisle at Winners.

I wandered past what appeared to be a Cookie Monster blanket with a hood and handed it to Chloe. My usual trick to keep her occupied while I peruse a store and then just before checking out I toss the now mauled, sometimes sticky, sometimes wet item on the closest rack and surprisingly she appears to be happy with the little time she’s had getting to know the “wasn’t-meant-to-be-my-friend” plush.  I’m not proud of the mess I leave behind. It’s just Mommy shopping survival.

I handed her the Cookie Monster blanket and she immediately started to say, “Elmo.”

Elmo is her favourite character and she crawls up to my computer and points, “Walk! Walk!” which is code for, “Please type in sesamestreet.org, select songs and choose “I Got a New Way To Walk” featuring Elmo and Destiny’s Child while I impatiently slam my hands on your keyboard hoping this will speed up the process.”

Certain she was calling out Elmo because she had made a connection from Cookie to his furry monster friend but that wasn’t it. She noticed Elmo on the Sesame Street tag affixed to Cookie Monster. She didn’t care about the soft, blue, googly-eyed, fur wrap (I was still unsure what it was meant to be), just that the little dude she found so engaging and entertaining was 3cms tall waving to her with a staple through his hand from a tiny piece of cardboard.

I let her examine 2D Elmo as we continued through the toys and just when I picked something up I felt the cart rock, her head swing back and the chanting, pointing and tears of joy began, “ELMO! ELMO! ELMO! ELMO!” (You get the idea) This went on until I followed Lassie’s uncharacteristic verbal cues to a rack glowing with a red, fur, something (robe?) with Elmo’s orange nose and bulbous white eyes.

Cookie Monster was down for the count dragging under the dirty, two front wheels of the cart, he was dead to her, to both of us. She had found what she’d been waiting for.

She has never had a blankie, a favourite toy, soother, Justin Bieber poster to cuddle, this was it. I even tried to place one of her sister’s plush toy owls in her crib the other night and found him smushed beneath her bed against the wall. Hard plastic eyes must have taken a beating. She was sending a message, waiting for that special someone to roll into her life when she least expected him…..from the top row seat on a metal Winners shopping cart. Oh the laughs they’ll have when they re-tell the story of how they first met.

Trying to scan and pay for the item proved challenging. She was not letting go of Elmo’s head and at one point had completely enveloped his nose and much of his face in her mouth, willing to have someone yank her teeth out in order to get what they wanted.

“Go ahead, make my day.”