"How are you doing today?"
"Oh, I'm fine thanks. And you?"
"I'm doing well, thanks. And how's she doing?" I asked looking in the direction of the toddler that was sitting in the child seat of the shopping cart, her back to me as she studied the assortment of Altoids packages in front of my register.
"Yea, you got it right!" she cracked with a wry smile.
"What? That she's a girl?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I just saw the hot magenta jacket with the pink lining and kinda went from there."
"You'd be surprised then. I can dress her from head to toe in pink and people will still thinks she's a boy."
"Hmm. How old is she?" I asked and continued scanning the groceries.
"She's just over a year old."
"Oh, how was the birthday?"
"Good, she stayed awake for most of it." the mother said with a big smile breaking across her face.
"Well, that's good."
"Yeah, she didn't do to well with her big sister hitting the piñata.
"Oh, how old is her older sister?"
"She's three-and-a-half. Her and her friends started beating up the piñata... I guess it was the violence of it."
I reached into the child seat and pulled out the last grocery, a half-pint of Half-and-Half, swiped it across the scanner, and pulled the cart through and started bagging.
"Wow, that's kind of an interesting coincidence. I was just up in Sacramento visiting some friends and they have a little girl that just turned a year old, and they also have a girl who's three and a half."
"Oh, that's neat." the mom replied.
"What's your daughter's name?" I asked, waiting for the credit card transaction to complete.
"Olivia."
"No way! That's their daughter's name--the one year old is named Olivia," my grin now insupressable. I thought about that for a second and, on a whim, just threw out, "And the three and a half year old's name is Isabelle."
The mom looked a little shocked, "That's her middle name--Olivia Isabelle. Her father is from Argentina, and we looking for names that weren't very common, but that would still be easy."
"Yeah, both of their parents are Mexican too. Wow... that's cool. What a coincidence."
"It sure is," she said with a big smile, taking the cart and starting to push it towards the door. "Have a great day," she said with a little wave of her hand.
"I will, you too!"