The baby's godparents are quickly establishing themselves as the most incredible godparents on the planet! Not only is the godfather already insisting on taking a full day off from his important job at the Pentagon in order to drive me and the baby home from the hospital, this week his wife dropped off three $50 gift cards to Toys R Us.
"Your kids are all so great!" Mary R. gushed. (Yes, this lady has actually sat next to my family during Daily Mass. Evidently, crawling under pews and waving various Lego creations at the Blessed Sacrament can still qualify a kid for "great" status in Mary's book.) She continued, "I don't want anyone to feel left out during all the exciting preparations for the new baby. Make sure the older Benjamin kids get some fun new things as well!"
The Toys R Us gift cards appeared on Wednesday. I took one look at my swollen belly and decided that I did NOT want to stand up for the hours that it would take a 3 year old, 5 year old, and 7 year to jointly decide how to spend the enormous sum of $50 each in a toy store. With free shipping, I easily voted to conduct all our toy shopping online.
For the past 72 hours, my house has held intense budgeting negotiations over this all important toy purchase. Maria easily agreed to my suggestions for extra food for her play kitchen. Hannah picked out a kid-friendly digital camera to use with her new blog in about 5 seconds. This has left Alex, my future engineer, a boy who is so intense that he should wear a pocket protector in the 1st grade.
Alex and I spent hours pouring over the Toys R Us website on Wednesday afternoon. Then Alex and his Dad spent additional hours talking over his toy options on Thursday night.
This morning, Alex greeted me with his final list: three drawings of various Star Wars Action figures and picture of a Plant Hoth Lego Set. "Mom, the Action Figures cost $10 each and the Planet Hoth set is $20."
"Great!" I said with relief. "Please go ahead and add your toys to our shopping cart while I finish Hannah's reading lesson. I'll be along later to fill in the gift card information for you."
When I finally made it to the computer this morning, I was surprised to find that our online shopping cart at Toys R Us contained 26 items. Alex's total bill made me laugh.
$550.36!
Oh, that pesky little decimal point!
