I'm sure every parent has been to that Build-A-Bear shop where you get your 30 minute thrill out of watching your child carefully choose their bear, stuff it, fluff it, and then dress it in the trendiest outfits while you fork over your last months salary to pay for it.
I'm sure many of you have held a birthday party or two there before as well. Who can resist taking a handful of kids to the place and take pictures of them sprawled out on the floor making their very own little pals that they'll pay attention to a total of one week before we find them collecting dust underneath the beds.
That is if they are like MY kids......
Then we get an idea of bringing Build-A-Bear to our very own home, like what the hubs did last night at our local Kids Clothes Connection sale that's going on for the next two weeks.
After wading through two weeks of 3 kids and the hubs having severe cases of swimmers ear, then my getting it a couple of days ago, I still managed to hit the sale of the year here in Auburn. A total of $100 bought me bedding and curtains for everyone in the house, matching pillows to boot, and a few clothes that I managed to break down and still buy the kids even though they are not in short supply of them these days.
Then I sent the hubs for the last few hours of the pre-sale before it opens to the public on Saturday. I expected him home by 8 p.m., but as the time quickly went past that, I knew he was up to some serious buying of stuff we didn't need shopping.
At last the man came home around 9:30. This is what he brought us:
1 Electric Guitar for Nadia's birthday - which he couldn't hide and we had to give it to her last night..
1 digital watch for Toni..
1 Joystick for PC games for Julian..
1 pair of wireless headphones for me - for which I have absolutely NO use for..
AND
1 Build-A-Bear Make-and-CeleBEARate party kit for Nia..
"Oh Dear God - WHAT was he thinking!"
Today after sporting an ultra throbbing earache which literally feels like Mike Tyson himself slugged AND bit my ear in one painful blow, Nia comes home after school and rips into the Build-A-Bear box and quickly has all its contents scattered over her bedroom floor... and the new bed set I bought her. We're talking hearts, glitter glue, glitter pipe cleaners, make-ur-own tacky party hats, etc., etc., etc.
I was hoping for more of a nap with the girl since I'm not feeling so hot.
But Noooo-OOOO-oooooo! She wants me to start sewing on one of the bears she has already picked out, and stuffed the complete shit out of its head with.
The string I'm suppose to sew with is.... well..... just a few feet shy of a mile long! I live with four kids, I sew, Nadia sews, but not a single person in the house can find me a pair of scissors in which to cut the string into a manageable piece to sew with.
Yeah, stupid me decides to go ahead with it and sew with this one long piece of fuzzy string I soon will be yelling expletives at - but not before I shoo everyone out of the room in order to do so.
After a couple of stitches, it was plain to see that the string was cheaply made as it started getting tangled up in all sorts of places along the way. Not just little little knots; BIG HONKING TWISTY KNOTS that made my five year old run for a bar of soap in order to clean "mommies filthy mouth out"!
I finally got smart 20 stitches and/or 45 minutes later and wrapped the string around Nia's closet door handle, which is clear across the other side of the room, while I sat on the other side of the room on one of her tiny table chairs. That enabled me to get a few stitches in before I had to pull all the string through all at once. This worked for awhile till the pain in my ear kicked up a notch and I started making weird stitches crossing this way and that.
I begin to undo the stitches and redo them again. I did this a few times as a matter of fact. At one point, I stood up to pull all the string through and in the course of backing up and sitting back down, I tripped over that same string that somehow got twisted around my leg and landed somewhere in between Nia's new bed ensemble, her tiny chair, and the giant Barbie loft house, where my head laid neatly in the living room of.
Mommy had a tantrum of her own after that.
"That's IT! Somebody else do this stupid thing since NO ONE is able to find ANY scissors in this house, and I'm sick of dealing with all this tangled string and this stupid-freaking bear!".
Which now, the string is wrapped around one of my legs again and trailing behind me as I'm flailing the stupid cream-colored bear and venting all over the house.
All I can imagine is a bunch of six year olds (which is the age suggestion - HA!), trying to accomplish the same thing this 40-something broad can't even do in the NOW 1 1/2 hours I've been spent wrestling with the stupid thing.
Everyone, including Julian, took turns trying to sew this one freaking bear together. I was glad to know that I wasn't the only one falling all over myself and getting all tangled up in the fuzzy devil-in-disguise.
If I had a temper tantrum - adult size granted - what the heck do think would happen with all those six year olds at some kids birthday party?
- First - their own temper tantrum
- Second - toss the thing at each other
- Third - begin to whine out of boredom and frustration and start squirting the glitter glue that came with kit, ALL over each other!
- Fourth - after the kids finally give up, all the mothers would be sitting on a sofa somewhere in the house trying to accomplish the exact same thing I have.
- Fifth - all the mothers politely laughing at one another that they didn't think it would be so hard; all the while cussing more expletives (in their heads of course), than I did and thinking the mother of the birthday kid is a COMPLETE MORON for even thinking of having a Sew-Your-Own Build-A-Bear Party!
The mother who put this thing up for sale at the Kids Clothes Connection and labeled it "Never Been Opened or Used" - $2.00, was apparently a LOT smarter than the hubs and I.
I do have to lump myself in with the hubs this time as I was the idiot that thought it was a good idea to work on this while sporting the worse case of swimmer's ear I've ever had.
Would scissors have helped this situation? Oh hell yeah! It would have even been better if the hubs had just kept on walking when he saw it in the first place. But that's what being a parent does to you sometimes: give you a huge case of the "I don't know what the f*** I'm doing!", sometimes!
So I'm here to warn you: Never... NEVER EVER... buy one of the Build-A-Bear CeleBEARate Party Kits thinking it my be a good idea to use to kill time at your kids next birthday party.
Trust me when I say... those moms WILL kill you for doing so!
Now that the Build-A-Bear thingy is safely in the garbage can, what in the HECK am I suppose to do with these wireless headphones?
