Cut Rate Toys

My adventure for today was a trip to Edgebrook's Cut-Rate Toys. The purpose of my visit was to purchase a Radio Flyer Runbike to give to The Girl for Christmas. The Boy is incapable of keeping a secret (which is a good thing for a 5-year-old, in my opinion), so I brought The Tot with me on the errand.

Despite Saturday traffic, it only took us about 15 minutes to drive there. I drove up Central Avenue, which proved to be gorgeous as it wound through the Forest Reserves. Finding a metered parking spot along Devon Avenue was easy-peasy. I even let The Tot walk across the street (holding my hand, of course).

My neighbor had told me that Cut-Rate Toys was a dingy little store, but I didn't think it was that bad. It was actually quite spacious and I felt less enveloped by stuff as I have in boutique toy stores like Building Blocks Toys and Timeless Toys. It was also refreshingly not a Toys R Us imitation; that place gives me a headache after about 5 minutes. CRT had a good mix of toys -- Darda cars, Melissa & Doug sets, Lego, Brio, Fisher-Price and some party-supply quality things as well.

I found what I needed right away while The Tot discovered the train table. Cut-Rate Toys has at least one aisle of wooden train accessories (tracks, locomotives, cars, etc.), most of which are Thomas the Tank Engine or Brio. The Tot zoomed into the train table and did not move much during our 45-minute visit to the store. He cried for quite a long time when we left; he did not want to leave the choo-choos.

I had been planning to take him for an ice cream at The Chocolate Shoppe, but he wandered into a salon just before the ice cream parlor and the owner gave him a dum-dum sucker. He forgot about the trains and was a happy camper for the drive home.

TRU

No, not the restaurant. It's not a participant in Kids' Restaurant Week, but even if it were, I probably would not take my kids to Tru, though the Trib has good things to say about Gale Gand (and as a pastry-addict, I'd like to try her stuff sometime). Instead, dear readers, I am talking about a giant, brightly colored, plastic-filled, noise-generating, headache-inducing outpost: Toys "R" Us. Otherwise known as TRU among the parent-set.

I took The Boy, The Girl, and The Baby to Toys "R" Us this afternoon. It is unlike me to shop for toys (a playroom [including a 5x5 EXPEDIT unit] bursting at the seams, plus toy bins in every bedroom, and the basement have killed that urge), but we had some gift cards to spend. The Boy picked out a new Razor Scooter (he left his old one on the front sidewalk and it had been stolen), The Girl chose a Little Tykes digital camera, and The Baby got a baby stroller (we now have 3; hopefully this means fewer squabbles over them) and a new GeoTrax train with controller (bringing our total of those up to 3 also; I hope this also translates into fewer squabbles). The best part? We still have $26.41 left over for another rainy day toy expedition. I was tempted to spend it on a huge GeoTrax Central Station toy, which was on clearance for $49.99. But although it'd be cool, it would also require more storage space than we currently have, so I passed.

At that point, we were all hungry and pretty grumpy because of it (despite the toys), so we stopped at Target for dinner on the way home. The Baby and I split an order of chicken tenders and a Yoplait yogurt (the kind I don't normally buy because its low fat content is counteracted by high-fructose corn syrup, which bumps the calorie total to an obscene number for low-fat yogurt), The Girl settled on a beef hot dog (organic mac & cheese was unavailable), and The Boy had his usual Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. We did shop a bit afterwards for pantry staples and a new kitchen rug.

Mommy Playdates

Grandma Naperville came to visit and babysit today. She got some quality time with The Baby, and I got to do a series of playdates with my own children.

First up, I went on a Mommy-The Girl playdate. We didn't have enough time to go to the Butterfly Museum, but we did engage in the 3-year-old version of the "spa day" and went for mani-pedis together at Lee Nails in Six Corners. The Girl often asks me to paint her fingernails, so I thought she'd be into getting her nails done professionally. She liked to pick out the nail polish color, and she likes the end result, but the process was rather lackluster an adventure for her. She sat in the chair by herself -- did not want to sit on my lap, held her hands out to be buffed, and patiently allowed the gal to paint her nails (and then to paint cute white-and-silver-glittery daisies on each nail), but she was not terribly interested in or excited by the prospect. She did conceded to sit on my lap for part of my pedicure.

Afterwards, we picked up The Boy and all went to lunch at McDonald's. Then I had a playdate with The Boy. Like his sister, his ideal destination (Nickel City) was too far away to reasonably get to in the span of time we had, so we had to come up with a Plan B. With the weather (cold, windy), and my health (head cold), it was hard to come up with something. So I defaulted to the cool mom standby -- a trip to the toy store, capped off with a trip to the book store. I think he had a good time; he kept picking out toys for The Baby and The Girl, although we just got a small train for him and some party favors for The Girl's upcoming birthday party.

When I got home, The Baby greeted me by not crying -- a departure from the usual. Instead, he toddled around the house, sat at his little table, and brought Grandma books to read.