Dammit! And, Toys R Us extravaganza.

So I forgot to post today until after midnight, dammit dammit dammit. Oh, well. It's still Monday night in my personal chronology.

Yesterday, as a reward for having walked home from school every day last week, Tallulah got to go to the Toys R Us in Times Square. Have you been? I used to work less than a block away, so I was rather familiar with the place already. It's like the amusement park of toy stores. Very fully themed. One trip with a young child plus a baby is probably enough, on a per-lifetime basis.

Tallulah's favorite part: The "life-sized" animatronic T-Rex, to whom she kept presenting toys, as if in offering/supplication. "Mommy, hand me that plastic alligator -- I want to show him to T-Rex."

Nate's least favorite part: Seeing his Mommy hanging in a ferris wheel car* about ten feet and a 4-story chasm away from him. He nearly leapt out of Scott's arms to get to me, alarmingly enough.

We were there for forever, it seemed, and man o man it was exhausting. But we managed to escape with only one smallish bag of toys (mostly presents to be given later) and two children who managed to hold it together (or, in Nate's case, fall asleep) until we got home. So: success.

* - yeah, Lula and I rode the ferris wheel. You only live once. Each gondola on the wheel is themed with a different sponsor: a toy or movie or children's entertainment conglomerate (Nickelodeon) or candy or brand. Did we get the Toy Story gondola? The Mr. Potato Head one? Or even: the MY LITTLE PONY one? No. We got the crappy wheelchair-accessible Cabbage Patch Kids gondola, because there were only two of us. Lula didn't care, even though there had been much My Little Pony desire expressed while we waited in the 45-minute line. She's a good kid.

PS (yeah, a PS after an aside, screw it): Some poor store worker takes a photo of everyone right after they get into their gondolas, and then as you're leaving the ride they present you with the photo on a monitor right at eye level. The petulant "awww!" noise that the (male) employee made after I declined to pay $20 for a print of said photo will echo in my head for days.