It seems a little silly and irresponsible to be posting about an expensive tea set that I foolishly bought for Baby Bug a day after I post about my family’s financial troubles but… well, I have no excuse. I shouldn’t have bought it. It was just so cute though.
It was supposed to be a birthday present. See the candles? How perfect for a birthday! But then it was back ordered and I forgot about it. Then after Baby Bug’s birthday, Oompa emailed me saying it was back in stock and click click click I bought it online before my rational judgement could set in. It really is true that Mommy bloggers are a major sector of the online consumer market. It’s just too easy.
So here we are today feeling guilty for spending $45 ($50-something with shipping) on a wee little wooden tea set that Baby Bug does NOT need… How many tea sets does she have now? Three?!!! BUT ISN’T IT CUTE?!!! Doesn’t it just give you a toothache looking at the little flower spoons that scoop up the wee little sugar cubes!!! Oh my goodness, I love this tea set. It is totally worth the fifty big ones I slaved away all night to earn.
The question is, who likes this tea set more? Baby Bug or me? Hmph. Baby Bug seemed to really like the candles that you can put in and out of the little slices of wooden cake. In fact, they were a bit of a problem because they are REALLY LITTLE! Like tiny enough to put up your nose and end up in the ER with. Not that that happened (it didn’t) but I am aware of their dangerous potential.
Thankfully Baby Bug is mostly past the putting everything in her mouth stage (and not quite to the putting-everything-up-your-nose stage yet) but I decided right then and there that this is a toy that stays in its box and gets put away after we’re done with it. Mostly because I think it would hurt me a little bit if we lost a piece. I need to re-think this gift. Maybe it is more for me.
It says on the box for ages four and up. OR you could be like me and read that little symbol to say “Fun for Four or MORE!!!” Wooo Hoooo bring on the party! Oh, there are only two tea cups. Oh well. We can share. One sugar cube for you, one sugar cube for me, lah-di-dah-dee. But really I think they are right on this one. The parts are way smaller than I expected.
It would probably be a perfect gift for my five-year-old niece who likes to play restaurant and pretend to be a waitress every day (and don’t get me wrong… she’s totally doing calculus on the side of her order-taking ticket book). But on the other hand I think by the time Baby Bug is five she will be bored with this set in about five minutes. She’s going to be playing with her chemistry set by then, don’t you know? So these age instructions are a bit tricky. I think this toy will be perfect for Baby Bug in a year or two but between then and now it will be perfect for US to play together.
We’re leaving tomorrow and I’m not one bit ready. I have to do laundry still and wash the car. I also have to pack some suitcases and figure out some kind of emergency fun kit for an eight hour road trip with a toddler.
What am I doing instead? (Besides typing this blog of course.) I’m sitting here making a Baby Bug calendar for 2008. Some of you asked how I made my calendar that you saw on my card wall of fame. I use Qoop through Flickr. They are decent quality for what they are.
Just make sure you don’t position your baby’s head on the page so she gets a punch hole right next to her eyeball and it looks like someone shot her in the head. I’m sure that was lots of fun for all my relatives to gaze at for the month of May.
Speaking of gazing, I’m also looking out my front door (that is a sliding glass door so I can look right through it) at a giant box. A giant box that is going to be a shelf (except it will be horizontal not vertical) in Baby Bug’s room to store all her toys. I’m so excited about it. I’d put it together myself right this minute if I could just lift the dumb thing. It seriously weighs 200 pounds. I know IKEA furniture is cheap but this shelf must be made of solid lead or compound wood matter or something. It is HEAVY. Or “Hehbby” as Baby Bug says.
I know I’m not supposed to be shopping at IKEA anymore after the great desk explosion of 2007 but where else am I supposed to get cheap furniture that I can track down in a single afternoon? I have no time for shopping or scouting out garage sales and Craig’s list anymore. I’ve snooped in the trash and there was NOTHING. Finally, I just buckled and bought exactly what I wanted for ONLY $79. You can’t beat that. Let’s just hope it isn’t made of lead or explodes.
I love IKEA and I hate IKEA. I love the simple lines of their furniture but I hate that it falls apart. I love that everything is affordable but I hate that they keep their prices low by cutting other places, like in the customer service department. I love their fun show room that you can walk around and pretend to play house in but I hate that you have to hoof three-thousand miles to get to your box of furniture in their warehouse. I also hate how when you are three thousand miles away down some long dark alley of towering boxes, there isn’t a soul around to help you lift a 200-pound box.
You see that box up there that Baby Bug is surfing on? I bought that all by myself. I mean ALL BY MYSELF. I did not speak to one human being from the time I walked into IKEA until the time I walked out. I didn’t even talk to one person in the parking lot as I teeter-tottered it into my trunk ALL BY MYSELF. Not a peep. Not counting Baby Bug of course. With her I had a running commentary about the whole episode.
I was just waiting for someone to say, “Please don’t let your child ride on top of the box while you wheel it down the aisle.” To which I would reply, “Oh! Please help me! Can you push my cart so I can wrangle my toddler and get this GIANT box to check out? Please! Please! Somebody pleeeeeeeese help me! Anybody!”
But no. Nobody helped me. Nobody even cared that Baby Bug surfed on top of a 200-pound box on top of a wheely cart. We were fine-and-dandy just helping ourselves because we are fancy-free and independent like that. Plfffff. I actually made three trips in and out of IKEA, checking the size the 200-pound box and the size of my 200-pound car to make sure that one could fit inside the other. I wasn’t sure.
I wheeled that thing through self check-out, wrangled Baby Bug before she teeter-tottered off the end of the 200-pound box and wheeled it right out the door with my receipt without speaking to a single soul. It was so un-American. But hey, it only cost $79. I guess I got what I paid for.
And that is what I am thinking about instead of packing my suitcases. I am not putting the bookcase together no matter how badly I want to. I’m leaving it for my Dad who will be staying in our house for a day while we are gone. My mom is house-sitting and my Dad will be home from the road for one night. Of course he wants to spend it putting together a bookshelf! That’s what Dads are for.
I wish I had written this two hours earlier. Scratch that, make that four hours earlier. It would have been so much funnier back when the synapses in my brain were popping off like whiffle balls out of an air gun. Now they are rolling out like bocce balls in molasses when the air gun is turned off. Why must you leave me hanging like this, you silly grande no-sugar vanilla latte from four hours ago? Enough complaining.
I have been requested to write about underwear and NOT about Baby Bug. Which is a really stupid request, if you ask me, since 200% of my brain is taken up with Baby Bug these days.
Oops.
I’m not supposed to write about Baby Bug but it’s impossible! I can’t. Okay, I’m sorry. I’m a failure! Besides, I have a feeling that me writing about underwear is nothing like you had hoped for anyway. If Justin Timberlake is bringing “sexy back” then I am taking it away again.
Speaking of “panties”, I’ve read on many blogs that certain people have a problem with that word. I personally don’t but I thought I would show off my html skills (cough cough, that I don’t have) and put in a radio bar so you can change the offending word to something you might like better. Like this:
Hmmmm…. that’s more annoying than the offensive word. Maybe I’ll just randomly use all of these words and only offend everybody one sixth of the time.
The other day Toby told me that I needed to buy new underwear. This is a pretty serious hint because, as all of you know, Toby loves me just the way I am. I can be freckly and flabby and dressed in my mom-slob attire and he still thinks I’m cute. So if he says I need some new underwear, it must be pretty bad. It was.
After getting the low-down skinny-scoop from whoorl, (who seems to know everything when it comes to being a girl and being sophisticated) I headed off to Gap Body. Apparently, they make these low cut hipsters that are cute, sexy and comfortable. Imagine that! I didn’t think that was possible.
I have a drawer full of pretty frilly lingerie from Paris but they are NOT comfortable. Cute as a button but I wouldn’t want to have to walk across town in them in the heat of the day. Not to mention, if you wear them every day and wash them at the laundromat instead of hand washing them like you are supposed to, they fall apart into shredded bits. Pffff. I can’t be bothered with hand washing. (That does remind me of another funny underwear story though. More on that later.)
Anyway, am I ever going to get on with this story? It’s not even that great of a story. By the time I get to the punch line you are going to think you wasted your entire day reading all this. But I continue.
At The Gap I found a bunch of really nice undergarments. I even found some bras that I desperately need. I’m so embarrassed to admit this but up until about a month ago I was still wearing my really nice soft cotton nursing bra from Japanese Weekend. It’s really nice and it was designed by a ballerina so that makes it okay. It’s not like it was one of those heavy duty over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder bras with clips to open the cups or anything. It’s soft and wrap-around-ish like those sweaters that ballerinas wear.
But yeah. It has no support. It kinda makes a not-so-well-endowed girl, like me, look like I’m wearing a bunch of undershirts rolled up under my clothes. Or I’m Hillary Swank wrapping myself in ace bandages. Except I don’t have anything to really wrap. The point is, it might be pretty and soft but it is not so very flattering.
I haven’t been bra shopping in a while and I had no idea that the store personnel tighten the straps up to the very minimum so the bra hangs pretty on a hanger. I didn’t notice this before I put it on, of course. So there I am wedged into something that feels five sizes too small and my little boobs are pushed up to my chin. Is this how the girls are wearing them these days? No. I just needed to readjust.
Readjusting while you are still wearing the bra is like trying to play cat’s cradle with a jump rope while you are tied up in it. It was a pain and a half, especially when you are shopping with a bored toddler who thinks her stroller is jail. I was so twisted up with the straps and my Elizabethan cleavage, it was terrible. And then Baby Bug had to go and laugh at me. Yes, she did. I just wanted to fling the silly thing on the floor and ban all bras forever.
I did manage to untangle myself and get my boobs down to their proper height. I even made it out of the dressing room before Baby Bug threw a temper tantrum. The end.
I told you the end would be anticlimactic. What can I say? This is a special request post. Not really a subject I’m known for excelling at. But I would like to add, the hipster undies are most definitely cute and sexy and comfortable. You should go get yourself some.
I have two more skivvies stories. One is about hand washing.
Way back in the day, way way way before Baby Bug, I used to live here in this apartment with three other girls. This was before Toby. One day I decided I was going to hand wash my unmentionables. I don’t know why. I was probably bored—something that makes no sense to me now.
I carefully washed all twenty seven pairs of drawers and then hung them on a make shift clothesline in my bedroom window. Because that was where the sun was at. We don’t have a yard here and the patio is shady and cold.
Well, guess who stopped by with his new wife to see my apartment? My boss! The president of the company I was working for at the time. He lived on my street and I guess he thought he’d take his new wife on a walk and check out the neighborhood and my apartment. I don’t know how or why they decided to “take a tour” but they did.
It was terrible! My house is so dirty all the time because of our awful carpet. I was embarrassed. I wanted to hide. But what could I do? He’s my boss and his new wife wanted to see my place. (She wasn’t really known for her tact.) So of course I led them from room to room and when they got to my room, there were all twenty seven pairs of underthings just hanging there in plain view.
It was so horrible and embarrassing. I don’t even remember what they said. I know they said something because I do remember clearly that they didn’t pretend they weren’t there. I guess I blocked it out. Thankfully, the subject was never brought up at the office.
My other story happened when I was on a cruise to Mexico. A good friend of mine got married on the ship and then took her whole bridal party (and me) with her and her husband on their honeymoon. How fun is that? Pretty fun.
We stopped in Puerto Vallaarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. It was a blast.* We toured a tequila factory, drank way too many piña coladas, danced the night away and generally did what you do when you are on a party cruise ship. On our last stop in Cabo, they only let you get off the boat for four hours. Not really enough time to do anything other than shop and get drunk. I’m not a heavy drinker so I dragged my friends out of some skanky bar and forced them to go down to the water with me.
Oh the water! It is SO blue there. It’s so bright you can’t tell the difference between the sky and the water. It’s turquoise like you’ve never seen turquoise. It’s beautiful. We were so in love with the water, we decided that we had to take a swim in it right that very minute. How could we not? When would we be here again? It was a once in a life time (well for me anyway, since I’m married to the anti-traveler) opportunity.
The only problem was, we didn’t bring our bathing suits with us. I don’t know why we didn’t. The weather is so hot down there I should have been wearing my bikini 24/7. But I wasn’t. Just shorts and a tank top. So you know what we did. We stripped down to our panties (sorry! I’m out of words!) and went swimming anyway. I’m so glad too.
From that day on, amongst that group of friends, I am known as “Commando” not because I wasn’t wearing any underpants but because mine were camouflage. There’s something you didn’t know. I wear camouflage underwear. I’m sure there’s a joke in that somewhere.
*except of course the case of Montezuma’s Revenge I got on the last day. But that’s just part of going to Mexico.
