Saturday, December 16, 2006

American Retail!

It amazes me to get out in the world and see American Consumer Dollars at work. There is no better time than the Holidays to witness them in all their glory, unless you have the luxury of shopping online. We went with a short list of purchases to make Saturday and finally returned home five hours later. We actually had to skip several drop offs because the recipients managed to get out and about.

We had on our short list, one older child's gift and a present from Grandma to Miles. Grandma Carol asked me to pick up a gift she wanted for the baby at a local Babies R Us. Of course they were sold out except for the floor model, minus the box and directions (offered to us at a whopping 15% off the already marked up Xmas price). We passed and decided to look elsewhere.

I called one of our "present drop offs" and found them to be at Toys R Us shopping for their son...........we have a Toys R Us? Come to find out it was in the same parking lot we were just in but blocked by the mall. So after driving all the way out and around, we came upon the next brick and mortar nightmare to search through. (Note to our friends without kids yet: When you do have children, shop for them early, because whatever you are looking for will be sold out long before Christmas.)

The toy stores are no different than the department stores this time of year. Everything looks like a bomb hit it. You know those pictures on the news of stores being looted in natural disasters. That's what holiday shopping looks like except with people actually paying and before this year we not only didn't have to go to the toy stores, we didn't even know where they were.

As for our purchase, we thought we had plenty of time considering we still have one usable weekend left before Christmas (although it's usually reserved for boyfriends and husbands). So every woman and unhappy child was out today trying to hit whatever over marketed sale they could find, and the last boxes of this or that quickly disappeared off the shelves.

Finally, we found what we were looking for and headed home to change a diaper and order dinner.......take-out. Figures that after all the out and about, we'd just want to eat in. By the way Christmas cookies cannot be counted as a valuable food source for the day and could lead to reckless purchasing when the sugar crash kicks in. After a good meal and a change of clothes we put another overcrowded, consumer crazy shopping day behind us and swore, once again, to do it earlier next year.

On another "too much information" note, the breast pump finally got returned today. That beastly, evil piece of equipment is out of our lives for good (hopefully)! If I can say anything good happened today, it was passing over that painful, nasty, forty-five dollar per month pump to the lady at the hospital. We decided, or should I say, I decided it was time to move on to formula and that I wouldn't feel guilty for not making it the full year. But when your 9 month old finds watching you pump to be funnier than Sesame Street, it is "TIME" to stop. (It is inevitable if your husband works that you will eventually have to do this in front of your child.) So, with very little resistance, we move on to a new era and put an old one FOREVER behind us...........Merry Christmas to me!

Friday, December 15, 2006

Sock Paws

Most everyone is familiar with the fact that Miles wears a hearing aid on a band around his head. Well if that wasn't challenging enough, you throw teething into the mix and you end up with "sock paws":

Miles has 4 teeth and is currently working on 5, 6, & 7. This is what happens when he thinks taking off his hearing aid will stop all the pain from teething. When "NO" fails to work, Super Mommy becomes Evil Mommy for a while!

Miles' fine motor skills will have to be sacrificed for a couple of days.....



Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Baby Clothes....

We keep getting asked this question, so I figured I answer it in a post:

Miles is in a "12 month" size right now and we suspect he will be wearing them for a while. If anyone plans on buying him "18 month" clothes, just remember, it will be summertime here by the time he fits into them so don't buy winter clothing in that size. Hope this helps.

Last Chance Santa!

We went to see the mall Santa last night. We figured we'd give Santa one more chance and see if we could get a good picture.....no luck. Miles screamed every time we put him on Santa's lap (all four times). We finally gave up when we realized we were holding up the line. We did take a few consolation pictures when we got home. (By the way....our kid does have clothes other than this outfit that you have seen in two previous posts. But this is the only Xmas outfit that fits him now. Grandma Carol did buy him one that he grew out of before he really got to wear it. Oh, well!)







Monday, December 11, 2006

Big Steps!

Miles started "really" walking a few days after his 9 month birthday. Now he motors everywhere he can. Here are a few recent pictures.