This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at my youngest sisters lovely home. How she did it, with a 6 week old baby on her breast hip, I’ll never know (thanks Jason for helping out!). But it went off without a hitch, if you don’t count the forgotten squash dish (oops!).

And then, it was this sister’s great idea that the three of us girls should attend to the Black Friday sales at the local outlet mall. This outlet mall, which really isn’t even an outlet mall since half of the stores are just normal old stores, begins the holiday craziness at midnight. So we all stayed up late (late for us anyway) or woke up from a brief nap, bundled up in our winter jackets, hats and mittens and hit the road. With only a 10 minute drive, we thought we would be OK leaving 10 minutes early. That was our first mistake, and the first sign that we are NOT cut out for Black Friday shopping. As we waited at the stop light, with police guiding traffic into the parking lot, I started thinking longingly of the kiddo, bundled up warmly in his bed, or Dad-oo playing WII with his brothers-in-law. But we were determined to take advantage of the amazing sales we expected to find.

Our first stop was old Navy, we browsed through the clothes, trying not to get run over by the millions (and by millions, I mean billions) of people crammed into this small store. We each grabbed a few things and went to find the end of the line, which coiled through the store like a python, reading to strike. After about 20 minutes in line, listening to people bitch and moan, gossip and just plain complain, we started eyeing up our selection. Are these things that we really can’t live without? Nope. Had we traveled more than 20 feet in the last 20 minutes? Nope. Time to bail.

The second, and final stop was at The Children’s Place, where you can get some awesome deals any day of the week, with $0.99 racks full of decent clothes. But this time we were a little smarter. One of us stood in line, while the other two shopped. Then we switched. We beat the system we thought slyly. And then we stood. And chatted. And stood, and found some more things to buy. And stood. And chatted with the women in front of us. And then two of us headed out to another few stores, thinking about how smart we are, the three of us multi-taking shoppers. Half an hour later we returned, to find that we were still only half way through the line. And halfway is being optimistic. So we waited, eyed up our selection and determined that this time, we really did need to make these purchases. I can’t turn down $5 shoes for the kiddo, $4 slippers and adorable footie PJ’s for less than $8. Plus an extra 25% off of the final total. So we waited. Had the exact same conversation with the same strange security guard at least twice, if not three times.  Raided my purse for any toddler emergency snacks that we could steal (two packs of fruit snacks and an granola bar). Waited. Complained of sore backs. And swore over and over that we would never do this again. Or if we do, we need to do some serious training before hand.

All in all, we shopped from midnight to 3:30 AM, and I made two purchases, clothes for the kiddo (totaling $16) and the second half of a b-day gift for my father-in-law. Was the amount of money I saved worth the hours in line (about 2 hours total at The Children’s Place)? Hell no! Never, ever, ever again will we do this. Especially since the kiddo woke up the second we got back, and cried on and off for the next 1.5-2 hours. And since we were all sleeping in the same room at my sisters house, and two other babies were in that house trying to sleep, bot me and Dad-oo spent that time trying to get the kiddo back to sleep. I treasure my sleep and sanity too much to ever do this again. Someone please remind me of this next year, when the amazing sales start tempting my pocket book, and I have selective amnesia about this year’s events.

Sassy Eli

A few weeks ago I was pondering what Eli’s first curse word would be. I of course assumed that he would pick it up from me or Dad-oo and even went on to list some words that have been known to float through our house. But, as it turns out, I was wrong. Eli picked up his first curse word from his grandparents. Yes, you read that right. Dad-oo’s parents introduced Eli to his first naughty word. And of course, we all laughed after he said it.

Now, in their defense, they didn’t intentionally teach him this word. We were causally eating dinner at our house, homemade pizza (yum), drinking wine or beer. Eli was hobbling around on his cast, trying to grab food off our plates. Being the helpful Grandpa that he is, he introduced Eli to the word fork, as Eli grabbed for it off his plate. Then Grandma chimed in and repeated the word several times, to make sure that he understood it. And then Eli repeated it. Over and over and over. While my eyes continued to get bigger and bigger, because he wasn’t able to pronounce the full word. Oh no. He was leaving out the “r”. Yes, that’s right, Eli was saying the “f” word (this is a PG blog, you’re going to have to use your imagination to figure this one out). And they didn’t even realize that it had happened.

Finally Dad-oo stepped in. Eli kept repeating his new favorite word and the Grandparents were delighted that they were the ones to teach it to him, but they didn’t realize what it sounded like. Dad-oo kindly pointed it, there was a slight pause before Eli said it again, and then, of course, the Grandparents burst out laughing. Oh God. Can we please go back in time and stop this from even happening? No? OK, damage control then. Let’s teach Eli knife instead. Yes, much better. Sigh.

Thankfully he hasn’t repeated the word since then, even when it was mentioned the next day (I’ll give you two guesses who said it). I think for now, we’ve moved past it. Until I’m walking through the mall, and Eli decides to shout his new word at the top of his lungs. Much like he did with the word clock at Wal-Mart. I’ll give you one hint as to what that word sounds like. Eli doesn’t pronounce L’s very well.

The joys of having a toddler who picks up on every word he hears.