17// ~Shopping~

Daniella, Athena, and I decided that it would be best if we started with getting some 'normal' clothes and furniture for when Ara is out of headspace, in order to ease into the day, and then once that's all finished we could move on to toys, bottles, onesies, and whatever else we thought would suit her needs when she was little.

Pulling into the parking lot of Target I park in the closest spot I can find which isn't the closest to the store but it doesn't bother me, it just means that we have to walk a little bit more.

Shutting the car off and stepping out, I close the door and look to the back of the car seeing Ara has also gotten out and is standing next to her door waiting patiently for one of us to tell her it's okay to walk across the parking lot.

"Good girl waiting for one us munchkin." I reach out and grab onto her hand. She blushes and looks down a  bit at her shoes, pushing around a pebble that was lying beneath her feet.

"You ready to get shopping done?" I ask with an excitement.

She looks up at me and nods her head fast. I laugh and move around to the back of the car where Dani and Athena were waiting and watching us. Ara reaches up and grabs onto Athena's hand with her unoccupied one and swings our arms back and forth as we walk inside.

"We do already have a bed in the room that I think is perfect but we don't have a dresser to keep all your clothes so let's go pick out one of those and then we can get a few new clothes to put in it. You can obviously bring some clothes over from your Grammys house too but I think it's always fun to get some new stuff right?" Athena asks once we make it into the store.

Ara nods. "Right." She says smiling up at Athena.

We make our way over to the dressers. The bed we have in the room right now is a plain white one that way she can get whatever comforter, pillows, and stuffed animals she wants to make it her own. Then we also have a nightstand on either side of the bed with very minimal decorations that can be replaced.

After looking through a few dressers Ara ends up liking a glossy white one with gold handles to open the draws.

"I think that is a good choice. It's very beautiful honey." I say to Ara after she had made her selection.

She was a little bit hesitant at first about choosing anything because she knew that we would be the ones paying for it, but with a lot of convincing that it wouldn't make a dent in the amount of money we had, she finally ended up being able to choose one.

We plan on putting this into the room she's in now and we have another room next to that one that we're going to put her crib, and a changing table and stuff in there, that way she has one room for when she's little and one for when she's not, even though I'm sure most of the time when she's big she'll end up sleeping in the bed with one or all of us, and possibly when she's little too. We have no problem with it though. Who can say no to snuggles with her, especially baby snuggles?

I called over one of the employees and asked if they could bring one of the dressers to the front while we finished shopping, that way we didn't have to lug it around the whole time and he did so happily. Which meant now it was time for some decorations and clothes.

I led us over to the home decor area and we followed Ara around as she pointed out some things she liked. She ended up getting some picture frames with cute pink pictures in them, a lamp, some adorable wooden baskets, some girly figurine things like a swan and an angel, and other miscellaneous stuff.

After getting what we would need for on top of nightstands and the dresser, we made our way over to the clothes. We knew she liked really girly stuff so it didn't surprise me when she picked out some dresses and skirts. We had her pick out some tights too though for when it got a little bit colder.

We knew she already had everything she needed proably at her Grammys house but we have the money to spend and how can you not spoil someone as cute as she is?

Once we got all the decorations and clothes loaded up into the basket, we made our way to the checkout line and payed for all of the stuff as well as the dresser that was waiting for us up at the front.

As Dani swiped the card I could tell Ara was feeling a little bit uncomfortable with us spending money on her. She was standing a little ways away and playing with her fingers, her eyes kept going back and forth from the price to all of us.

I walked a few steps towards her so I was closer and put my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into my chest.

"What are you thinking so hard about over here, huh?"

"Nothing." She mumbled out, trying to hide her face from me a little by shoving it further into me.

I chuckled. "Nothing, huh?" I paused for a minute to see if she would let anything else out before continuing. "Well I know you said it was nothing, but just so you know, we actually really like being able to spend money on you and buy you things that make you happy. Also, to be honest, we have so much money we don't know what to do with it all." I bring my head down a little and whisper the last part so only she can hear.

"I know, I know you said that. I just...I still can't help but just feel bad cause...well, it's not my money and I didn't do anything to deserve it." She shrugged, pulling back from me a bit.

"Deserve it? What are you talking about? You do deserve it baby, and even so, you don't need to do anything to 'deserve' being spoiled by us. You're our baby so that kind of came with the whole deal." I chuckled.

She blushed and her cheeks got even more rosy than they usually are. "Okay." She whispered out. "Thank you."

"Any time." I kissed her forehead before moving over to the bags and grabbing some, that way we didn't have to bring the cart outside. We got all the bags and left the cart back inside before going into the car and loading everything into the back.

I got into the drivers seat and made sure everyone was buckled up before we made our way to our second stop.

There's this store about half an hour away that sells stuff for littles so I decided to go there since things are better suited for Ara. For example, the pacifiers are a different shape to fit the pallet of her mouth since she is technically an adult and doesn't have the actual mouth shape as a baby. The other things she could honestly probably use from an actual baby store because of how petite and thin she is, but I want her to get used to this atmosphere.

Plus who knows, she can meet a friend by seeing other littles at the store. I just hope it's not too busy cause that might freak her out as this is the first time she's being fully exposed to this sort of thing.

Something tells me she is going to be just fine though.

Putting the car in park, I turn around in my seat to look at Ara. We figured we would talk to her and inform her about what the store was before we walked in so she would be prepared a little bit. We didn't want to tell her much much earlier because we knew she would be thinking about it all day long, but we also don't want her walking in and being completely shocked so we figured now was a good time.

"Before we go in, we just wanted to tell you that this is a store for littles, so you might see some walking around with their mommy's or daddy's. That also means you don't have to be quiet or embarrassed about anything once we get it there. Whatever you want to talk about, or buy, is perfectly fine and nobody in there will bat an eyelash." I smiled at her watching her facial expressions. When I first started talking her eyes seemed a little wide, but they relaxed after a minute and she seems okay now.

She nods her head and squeezes her hands together into fists. "Does that mean I...I can bring in tootsie." She picks up the stuffed bunny from her lap that she had brought into the car with her and rubs the fur on its ear.

"I think it would be better if tootsie stayed in the car that way nothing bad can happen to her and she can't get lost." Dani says to her gently.

Ara's mouth opens and closed a couple times like she wants to protest but eventually she looks down at tootsie and agrees. "Okay." She whispers.

"Good girl." Ara brushes her hair behind her ear on the side closest to her. "I know, it must be hard to leave her in the car right?"

Ara nods and squeezes her closer to her body.

We all start getting out of the car and give Ara a minute to collect her thoughts. Standing outside of Ara's open door I see her whisper to her stuffy. "Bye-bye tootsie. I promise I be right back super quick so don't be scared." She kissed her on the head and placed her down into the seat before getting out of the car.

I close her door for her and kiss her on the forehead before grabbing her hand and walking her into the store, Dani and Athena right behind us.

When we walk in her eyes dart a hundred miles an hour looking at everything she can possibly see, as quickly as she possibly can.

I rub my thumb along the back of her hand and she squeezes it a little bit tighter.

There are a couple littles running around while their caregivers yell at them to slow down, others walk nicely and calmly next to their caregivers, and a few are seen crying after I'm presuming they weren't allowed to buy something they wanted.

"We'll start out with getting some clothes and furniture and then you can pick out some toys and maybe some stuffies alright? Maybe you can get tootsie a friend."

She nods her head and looks up at me, waiting for me to take the lead and walk us to where everything is. We all go over to the clothes first and let her pick out some littler clothes. She mostly gets pink and sparkly dresses, skirts, and shorts, and I throw in a couple onesies - some with designs and a couple just plain for under other clothes. We also grabbed some socks, underwear, bathing suits, and anything else she could possibly need - including a coat for when it comes winter time in a couple months.

After she has a decent amount of clothes picked out and doesn't like anything else they have, we move over to the furniture area. We need to get another dresser for her nursery, preferably one that's big enough for a changing table mat on it, and a crib.

After looking at a few options, we agree on getting a crib that is able to have the front bars taken off or lowered quite a bit so that it can suit her if she's in toddler headspace or isn't fully in headspace but doesn't want to sleep in her big girl bed.

We also got a car seat, dresser, and changing mat in that section.

Once we moved on we went over to the isle over that contained a lot of necessities and we let Ara pick out some stuff she wanted. She got some binkies, bottles, and a set of cutlery for eating that included a plate, silverware, sippy cup, bowl, silverware and stuff like that. They were also a shade of pink.

I think it's clear to say she likes pink.

While I stayed in the aisle with her while she was looking around Dani went to the aisle over and grabbed some pull ups and diapers. We won't have her wear them at first if she doesn't want to, but it's good for us to have incase she starts to have accidents.

The last thing we needed to grab was just some toys for her and maybe a new stuffed animal if she wanted it. I'm not sure if she would feel like she's betraying tootsie by getting another or if she'll want to get a fried for her.

After Dani came back from grabbing that stuff we moved over to the toy section. As soon as we walked down into the toy section I heard some shouting and looked up.

Another little was throwing a tantrum.

"No! Wan' it now!" She shouted at who I assumed was her daddy before grabbing one of the toys off the shelf and throwing it across the room.

I looked over at Ara who had stopped walking and was watching the scene in front of us.

"Excuse me, we do not talk that way. Go pick it up and put it back on the shelf." Her daddy crouched down and spoke sternly to her. She looked to be a little older than Ara as well as taller, and she was wearing a lot of black. She was probably a bratty little.

"Why she yelling like that?" I hear Ara say quietly to me.

"Some littles are just a little brattier than others cause that's how they like to act, but she could also just be a having some big feelings right now which can be causing her to act in a way she usually doesn't." I tried to explain the best I could to her.

"Oh." She continues to look at them.

The man watched as his little returned the toy to the shelf and then he grabbed her hand and they started walking out.

"Sorry about that." He says as he walks past us.

"No worries, good luck to you." I laughed.

He smiled. "Thanks. She isn't usually this disrespectful, but my wife's out of town for a couple days on a girls trip so she's been acting out a bit more than usual in protest."

"Aww, ya that makes sense." I look down at Ara and see her eyeing the girl. I can tell she wants to say something but it's taking a few moments for her to gain the courage too.

She speaks a few seconds later in a voice I can just barely hear. "What your name?"

"Amelia." Is all the girl replies, looking down slightly at Ara.

"My name Ara. Hey, both names start with A!"

I smile watching them interact. I can Amelia is a sweet girl, she's just trying to deal with difficult emotions right now.

"Ya." She says slightly disinterested.

I look back up at the man. "Want me to give you my number, maybe the girls can have a play date sometime?"

"Ya that sounds great."

I take his phone from him and enter my number before handing it back to him. "Thanks, so we'll set something up later. For now I have to get this pipsqueak home." He laughs.

"Sounds good, it was nice meeting you." I shake his hand.

"You too..."

"Morgan."

"Chase."

He walks out with Amelia and our focus goes back on the toys littering the shelf's.

We watch as Ara walks up and down the rows picking out a few toys hear and there. She grabs a tea party set, some dolls, and sets she can do with them like give them a bath or change their diaper.

When we get to the stuffed animals she immediately spots one and runs up to it, picking it up and squeezing it.

"Look!" She turns around holding up the duck with a hat and scarf on it.

"Wow, I see, it's very nice. Do you want that baby?" Dani says crouching down to her height.

"Yes yes yes! Please!" She squeals jumping up and down.

"Okay sweet girl." She laughs. "I think that's a very lovely choice."

She smiles up at all of us and holds it tight. "Thank you!"

"What are you going to name it?" Athena questions.

"Ummm...let me think. Maybe...buttons."

"Buttons, what a cute name. I think it suits her very well." I say.

"Thank you!"

"Alright I say we check out and go home to put all this stuff in your rooms before you have to go home for the night." Athena speaks.

Ara frowns but agrees and we make our way to the checkout area and pay.

Once we get everything loaded up into the car I get back in the drivers seat and we make our way home.

When Ara comes home for the night to talk to her Grammy we plan on completing making over both rooms to surprise her tomorrow.

I cant wait to see the look on her face when she sees them. For now though, we just have to put the stuff in the rooms and away where they belong and enjoy the last few hours we have with her today before we have to bring her home.

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Here is an overview of most of the things they bought so you can have an idea of the style. You can imagine it however you would like though of course!

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3172 words

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Hopefully you all enjoyed this chapter!! Tried to get the things that needed to be done done but also keep some fluff and make it cute so hopefully that translated and you guys liked it!

Again, thank you to every single person that has been reading, voting, or commenting!!

Question for this chapter is:

Do you have dreams a lot and do you remember them?

Up until a couple years ago I would rarely ever dream and would only have nightmares, plus I experienced sleep paralysis a few times so it was not fun but now I would say half and half dreams and nightmares and I remember most of them. Plus I'm a new medication and it's making my dreams so vivid which is cool, but not when they are nightmares.

Bye-bye

- lauren 💕