Giving Away The Baby

People think Eva is cute.  I mean, she IS cute, so I'm not all that surprised when we get lots of smiles from strangers. We get the most smiles at the mall.  When we go to the mall, Alison sets me down at a coffee shop with Eva.  I read, Eva coos in her stroller and Alison walks around and does window shopping.  After a while, Eva gets bored and I need to take her out of the seat.  Or I want to hold her and I need to take her out of the stroller (no one is ever sure which it is) and we play a little bit.  That gets the most smiles. 

On Friday after church, we headed over to a used book sale - a charity event for one of the churches (used book sales are our Achilles heel).  As we browsed through the books, one of the women came over and asked if she could help - by holding Eva for me.  I was just find holding her myself, but I know that she's just so darn irresistible.  So some random woman took her, and pretty soon all the other women (all of them Indian) were standing around cooing. 

This type of thing is not uncommon here.  Some friends of ours who have small children have had similar experiences.  Once, while sitting at a restaurant with their infant, a random Bahraini woman came up and complimented them on their child and proceeded to pick up the child and walk away.  Not far - across the restaurant to her family.  After a little bit, their kid was brought back.  

That hasn't happened to us yet - but I fully expect it to.  Eva only gets cuter as time goes on.