Saturday, April 26, 2008

In other news this week...

...I went to Philip's I.E.P. meeting on Thursday. ( Individualized Education Plan, for those of you who are not up on the latest alphabet soup of the Special Ed world. It's a meeting for parents and teachers to evaluate progress and set goals for the next year.) I did not have anyone to take care of Aiden for me as Brad had to work overtime that day, and my mother, mother-in-law, and Penny were all out of town, so I told Philip's mom about my dilemma and she was fine with me bringing Aiden with me... I told her that as soon as he started to fuss, I would leave. There were six or eight people there besides Philip and his parents, and all of them were women; you should have seen the commotion that Aiden caused. Everyone had to see him and coo over him and touch his toes and make him smile and they all wanted to sit next to him. He put everyone in a good mood from the get-go, and someone said, "We should bring babies to every I.E.P. meeting!" We didn't last the whole meeting, but I got to stay for a good part of it anyway.

Changing the subject completely... The other day I was thinking, What are we going to do when Aiden gets too big for his cradle swing? It's his primary residence when we're downstairs and he's not being held by someone, but he's fast outgrowing it. I saw this picture in Liane's Flickr account of Adam in this thing called an exersaucer - kind of like a walker but without wheels. It's pretty much a seat in the midst of a big, round plastic play station type of thing. I thought, hey, I should look for one of those when I go yardsaling.

The next morning was Friday and I had a couple errands to do... and I knew of a few yardsales in the area. At the first one I went to, there was an exersaucer. YES! I hit the jackpot! It was a little more money than I wanted to spend but I figured it was too early in the day to start seriously haggling. Plus, as I thought about it, I realized I was being stingy. Here I'd just said I wanted one of these, and I knew that it would cost three times as much to get a brand new one, and now I'm complaining that this one, right in front of me in great condition, is too expensive? There is a line between wise frugality and pinchy miserliness... and I dance on that line on a regular basis. ( I pictured God heaving an exasperated sigh if I passed it up- Hello! You asked, and I provided, even if it isn't a rock bottom price... it's still a pretty good deal. ) So I decided to throw stinginess to the winds and cheerfully forked over the cash and bought the thing. And proceeded to douse it with Lysol and wash the cloth seat. I'm very happy with it. He probably won't be able to really use it for another month or two, until he has better trunk control etc.

I was a little stunned at my good fortune. I was hoping to find this very specific thing and I found it right away! Okay, I'm going to have to set my mind on something else and try this on next week's foray. I really want to find a nice big mirror for my dining room wall. It has been bare of any wall decoration for nigh onto three years. Mirror, mirror, mirror. I need a mirror. I'll let you know how my bargain hunting goes. ( Don't I always?)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trunk control makes me think of him as a little sapling. :)

KJ said...

Phew... I was afraid that you would buy the seat thing and then go to the next yard sale and find another one in just as good condition for a lot cheaper.... Murphy's law and all. But I am thankful it didn't happen that way and that you have a good tool/toy for the future :)

Shari said...

Maisy loved her Jumperoo (exersaucer). But once she started crawling a couple of months ago, she was done with it. Lol.

I love bargain hunting. :-)