Yay for cheap toys!

The nesting instinct is officially in full swing. Must clean, must buy, must prepare!!! It's driving me crazy. I can't work on the nursery because it's still Kelly's office for now, I don't want to buy too much before my shower and I don't really need that much for Isabella anyway, because I still have all the major baby items from Benjamin, and having Benjamin to deal with leaves so little time to even think about the next one at this point. So, I try to control this urge by making endless lists (thus being productive while not spending any money) and focusing on what Benjamin needs for the coming season. With this in mind, I realized he really needs some new sport shoes. The ones I've seen new are around $25 - way too much for toddler shoes in my opinion, so I went to a Mom2Mom sale yesterday - a wonderful place to get nice, used things. Didn't find any shoes his size but I found some really fun things that I've actually been wanting to buy him and just haven't wanted to pay for. Since these were really cheap, I got them and Benjamin has been playing with them non-stop now for 2 days.

The first is a little rocking dog similar to one I've seen him playing with at the child care at my gym and thought was cute and the second is a huge foam puzzle with poke out letters. They have one at the library that he adores, and this one was $30 less than the one at the store so I couldn't pass it up. When I told him to play with his presents so I could take pictures, of course he didn't actually play, he simply got on them for a split second before running back over to look at the picture. I had to try several times before he'd stay on long enough to actually get a picture.


My favorite, though, is the look on his face while on the puzzle. I had told him to smile and this is apparently what I look like when I'm smiling because this is the face he made.


We've (well, not me, technically. It was Kelly that did all the crawling around in the attic) installed ceiling lights, both recessed and otherwise, in all our bedrooms and in our living room this past week. Benjamin picked up the useful word "bulb" in the process. As in lightbulb. His first English word, technically. He's absolutely fascinated by the new lights everywhere. He hardly slept the night we first put them in. He was up about 6 times from the excitement. Every day he runs into the various rooms, pointing up at the ceiling, saying either "bulb!" or "dada!" at least every 30 minutes. I'm not sure if exclaiming "dada" means that he's saying, "Dada put in the lights, isn't he cool!?" or "Dada made those holes in the ceiling, how come I'm the only one that gets in trouble when I put holes in things?!" Either way, Dada is a hero now. I love this age where everything parents do seems miraculous to the child. As a very witty friend of mine said, "Behold and then there was light, and lo, it was recessed!" Kelly, of course, is no less excited. He and Benjamin are like kids in a candy store, sliding the dimmer switches up and down with never ending glee. Seriously, though, I'm pretty proud of Kelly. The lights do look really cool.