Happy New Year, everyone! And what better way to start a new year than by preparing for the new addition to the family?
Southern Honey and I went on a bit of a shopping spree yesterday. One that spanned two states, two malls, and involved the use of a price gun. Plus we had dinner at IHOP and made it home by seven. I’m still surprised I didn’t curl up in a tiny ball and whimper when all was said and done.
First thing first, we ran around town here returning duplicate Christmas gifts (we got two food processors, two stand mixers, two zesters, two power tool sets, and three copies of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens; next year, more diversity in the Christmas lists since no one checks with anyone else about what they’re getting). Then we went back to the kitchen supply store and made me a very happy woman with a KitchenAid mixer; it’s not the black one that Southern Honey wanted, but they didn’t have any, so we got a metallic chrome finish instead. Man it’s going to look lovely on my counter!
Then we grabbed some lunch and hit the road for the big city so I could take back a sweater I bought at A Pea in the Pod in Houston and then had buyer’s remorse over ($60 sweater, I still don’t know what I was thinking). Getting to the mall down there was insane — traffic around the mall was horrible — and once we were there, we had trouble finding the store. See, Destination Maternity bought out Mimi Maternity a couple of years back and was supposed to have converted all the Mimi stores over to DM or APITP. Totally had not happened with this one, so we got to the really crowded mall, found a map, and then couldn’t find the store. And DM’s customer service line was down. I finally had to call the mall office just to find out what the heck was going on. But I got the stupid thing taken back. Finally.
After that, it was back across town toward home for Babies R Us. We hadn’t planned on registering at that point, really, but I realized I didn’t want to make another trip down there if I could avoid it, so we got all set up with our gun and their extremely long list of things we should ask other people to buy for us and went to town. I think we ended up with about thirty items, one of which is going to be removed and added to the Target registry we’re probably going to do today, but I was really pleased overall. Even if nobody buys anything we zapped today, we’ll save money in the end with the 10% discount on stuff we’re going to need: stroller, car seat, crib sheets, first aid kit, temporal thermometer, etc. And we bought our crib mattress while we were there, since it was fairly cheap and on sale (actually, I had to send Southern Honey back for it when we were at IHOP — they share a parking lot — since we forgot it on our way out the door).
I think we’ve decided on furniture, too. NOT from Babies R Us — that stuff is seriously expensive for reasons I’m still working on fathoming — but from WalMart, most likely: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Delta-Baby-Crib-Changer-Espresso/10811686 There’s one at Target that we’re going to take another look at today when we go back into town. It’s a crib and changing table combo with a drawer underneath the crib for storage, and then we’re going to move our mostly-unused dresser that should pretty much match the finish into the Munchkin’s room rather than buy a new one.
The rest of our evening was totally uneventful. We were busy sitting around being geeks and playing Magic: The Gathering (he’s teaching me tactics since all of our other friends are either really into it or getting back into it) and would have missed the whole midnight thing if we hadn’t gotten a few texts reminding us we’d missed the ball drop. Again. 😀
Southern Munchkin 