Attention Shoppers - Everything Blows

Alina is still at that age where we can take her with us when we're Christmas shopping for her presents. Since she has five spoiling grandparents and we're saving for Baby #2, we personally felt going present crazy with her was ill-advised. We've seen other people's homes and how easily the kiddie fodder can pile up. Hey, Santa gets all the credit anyway. Justification, check! We went to KB Toys with her, which was like walking into a junkyard - mostly because the ransacking that had already taken place. Once you swept past the toys dipped in lead-based paint, Dora, Spongebob, Barbie, and Transformers, there isn't much left. They actually had child-size boxing gloves! Not the novelty inflatable kind, but actual boxing gloves. I want to meet the family that settles sibling disputes with these. "Tape up your wrists, Timmy. You and your brother are stepping into The Octagon." Then there were kids who seemed to be tasked to pick out their own Christmas presents and hand them to their parents to buy. Lets hope that trend doesn't catch on.

For this adventure, one of us would walk through the store, making mental notes of what we like, while the other monitors Alina as she wades through the vast piles and corridors of things that go bleep blop bloop.


We ended up buying a 7'x7' bouncy house. It inflates in 30 seconds and will fit rather nicely in our kitchen, when needed. I guess it could be used to tire out the kiddies while we cook dinner. Either that or cockfighting.