The big box dilemma
A few days ago I was in one of those big box stores looking for a few things, and I decided to run by the toy section just to take a look. I haven't spent much time in the toy section of big box stores, and a few minutes was enough to tell me why: it's almost impossible to find anything worth buying. I was trying to find a toy that was a) not plastic and b) not affiliated with any licensing agreement -- just those two criteria eliminated virtually every toy in the store. I finally found something that was part wood and part plastic (my compromise because honestly, 100% of the toys are plastic, and that includes several books!) and not a Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, TeleTubby or other licensed character. It was really depressing, actually -- and just one more reason to not support the Wal-Marts of the world.
My dad was in town this weekend, and on Friday we had a little dinner party with Keri and her children plus Elaine, our daycare provider, and our friend Liza. When Isaac and Mina showed up, the place erupted with children; I felt a little bad for Elaine, since she spends all of her time with kids and probably wanted a quieter evening, but it wasn't to be. The great part for us, though, was that my dad spent a lot of time with the kids -- in fact, he was having a ball as they ran around attacking him with boogers, chasing each other through the Ikea tunnel and then jumping off the coffee table onto the couch. It allowed the rest of us to have a bit of actual adult conversation. I think Keri was especially happy about this, since Arne has been traveling a lot and she hasn't had much time away from the kids. Devon had a grand time and talked about Isaac and Mina for the rest of the weekend.
We went to the farmer's market on Saturday, which was the first time we'd been to the Ferry Plaza in several weeks. One thing that's excellent about that market for children is that it's full of buskers; we stopped by one guy playing the clarinet who had a whole repertoire of children's songs. He was starting to look like the Pied Piper by the time we left. We also played on the Gandhi statue, but when it was finally time to leave, Devon had a full meltdown -- she just didn't understand why we weren't letting her go back to Gandhi. I ended up carrying her out of the market while she was screaming at the top of her lungs. But we did end up getting some excellent produce and my dad got some truly stinky cheese (like room-clearingly stinky), which we sampled later for lunch.
Later in the afternoon we discovered that Devon, who has been really excited about drawing with crayons, applied some of her artistic talents to her walls -- there was a huge scribble of red crayon on the wall! I gave her a careful explanation that crayons could only be used for drawing on paper, not on walls. I think that she did understand this but decided to use it as an opporuntity to test limits; in the morning, I noticed that there was purple added to the red crayon on the wall. It really came to a head, though, when the next morning she ran into the kitchen and drew with crayon on the interior glass door -- with all of us watching her! We had to repeat the lecture and, just to make sure that we had no more repeats, we put the crayons up on a high shelf. Clearly she's not ready to use them unsupervised. I did Google crayon on walls and got several recommendations, the most inspired of which was using toothpaste and a toothbrush. We had yet to try it, but I'll report on the outcome.
Later, after some of these incidents, Walt and I realized that she was starting to get sick, or at least we think that was part of the problem (that, and we're also at the tantrum stage). Her eyes were getting goopy and she had this thick cough -- and later (and most tellingly) when we put her down for a nap, she slept for 3 hours, which is entirely unprecedented. In fact, for the next couple of days, she was taking abnormally long naps -- rather pleasant for the two of us, actually, but not so great for Devon if she is actually sick.
Today we got some of the shades we ordered installed -- remember, we ordered these in August, so now over three months later, we have part (but not all) of the order in. EXPO "lost" some of these window coverings, or at least had sent some of them to the wrong installer and had to reorder some things; but we did ask them to install the ones they had so we could take down the wife beaters we had clamped up to our bedroom windows. I was actually a little suprised at how good most of these look on the windows -- I was a little worried at matching little 1" paint chips to fabric samples, since it would be very easy for that to go very wrong. But the colors actually look great. The only problem is that because the apartment has settled, the windows are not true; and having the shades installed actually makes them look even more crooked! So the overall effect is one of having great fabric and shades that have a hint of funhouse in them.
The even weirder thing is that it turned out that these installers had actually gotten the entire order; they just couldn't install some of the blinds because they were shipped with the wrong brackets. But then later today, Home Depot called and said the other part of the order was arriving in the next couple of weeks and was trying to schedule installation. So now we have no idea what is going on; it seems like they might have ordered two sets of shades -- and it looks like EXPO might be confused that we even got the first set installed. Ugh. It's really nice to get some shades, though, since for the last couple of months the entire street has been looking into our windows.
My dad was in town this weekend, and on Friday we had a little dinner party with Keri and her children plus Elaine, our daycare provider, and our friend Liza. When Isaac and Mina showed up, the place erupted with children; I felt a little bad for Elaine, since she spends all of her time with kids and probably wanted a quieter evening, but it wasn't to be. The great part for us, though, was that my dad spent a lot of time with the kids -- in fact, he was having a ball as they ran around attacking him with boogers, chasing each other through the Ikea tunnel and then jumping off the coffee table onto the couch. It allowed the rest of us to have a bit of actual adult conversation. I think Keri was especially happy about this, since Arne has been traveling a lot and she hasn't had much time away from the kids. Devon had a grand time and talked about Isaac and Mina for the rest of the weekend.
We went to the farmer's market on Saturday, which was the first time we'd been to the Ferry Plaza in several weeks. One thing that's excellent about that market for children is that it's full of buskers; we stopped by one guy playing the clarinet who had a whole repertoire of children's songs. He was starting to look like the Pied Piper by the time we left. We also played on the Gandhi statue, but when it was finally time to leave, Devon had a full meltdown -- she just didn't understand why we weren't letting her go back to Gandhi. I ended up carrying her out of the market while she was screaming at the top of her lungs. But we did end up getting some excellent produce and my dad got some truly stinky cheese (like room-clearingly stinky), which we sampled later for lunch.
Later in the afternoon we discovered that Devon, who has been really excited about drawing with crayons, applied some of her artistic talents to her walls -- there was a huge scribble of red crayon on the wall! I gave her a careful explanation that crayons could only be used for drawing on paper, not on walls. I think that she did understand this but decided to use it as an opporuntity to test limits; in the morning, I noticed that there was purple added to the red crayon on the wall. It really came to a head, though, when the next morning she ran into the kitchen and drew with crayon on the interior glass door -- with all of us watching her! We had to repeat the lecture and, just to make sure that we had no more repeats, we put the crayons up on a high shelf. Clearly she's not ready to use them unsupervised. I did Google crayon on walls and got several recommendations, the most inspired of which was using toothpaste and a toothbrush. We had yet to try it, but I'll report on the outcome.
Later, after some of these incidents, Walt and I realized that she was starting to get sick, or at least we think that was part of the problem (that, and we're also at the tantrum stage). Her eyes were getting goopy and she had this thick cough -- and later (and most tellingly) when we put her down for a nap, she slept for 3 hours, which is entirely unprecedented. In fact, for the next couple of days, she was taking abnormally long naps -- rather pleasant for the two of us, actually, but not so great for Devon if she is actually sick.
Today we got some of the shades we ordered installed -- remember, we ordered these in August, so now over three months later, we have part (but not all) of the order in. EXPO "lost" some of these window coverings, or at least had sent some of them to the wrong installer and had to reorder some things; but we did ask them to install the ones they had so we could take down the wife beaters we had clamped up to our bedroom windows. I was actually a little suprised at how good most of these look on the windows -- I was a little worried at matching little 1" paint chips to fabric samples, since it would be very easy for that to go very wrong. But the colors actually look great. The only problem is that because the apartment has settled, the windows are not true; and having the shades installed actually makes them look even more crooked! So the overall effect is one of having great fabric and shades that have a hint of funhouse in them.
The even weirder thing is that it turned out that these installers had actually gotten the entire order; they just couldn't install some of the blinds because they were shipped with the wrong brackets. But then later today, Home Depot called and said the other part of the order was arriving in the next couple of weeks and was trying to schedule installation. So now we have no idea what is going on; it seems like they might have ordered two sets of shades -- and it looks like EXPO might be confused that we even got the first set installed. Ugh. It's really nice to get some shades, though, since for the last couple of months the entire street has been looking into our windows.
posted by Devon Szalva at
8:53 PM
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