Mommy Confessional: First Trip to Build-A-Bear Workshop

Yesterday was a pretty big day for Liam....and for me I guess. My mother-in-law decided to take the kids to Build-A-Bear for an early Valentines day. We never had the chance to take him before now. Our Build-A-Bear here is in the mall so I was really nervous and scared. I didn't want to go when the mall would be busy because we can't take Liam around alot of people. Can't take the chance of him catching something. We choose yesterday because all the schools were back in session so we knew there wouldn't be teens loitering around or alot of people shopping. We also went when the mall just opened so we wouldn't run into the lunch crowds or the people trying to beat the lunch crowd. Even though I scoped out the parking lot as we looked for a parking spot I was nervous. There weren't very many cars at all but we all know that it didn't mean that most of them hadn't been packed with people. We parked near the entrance closest to the store hoping to avoid a prolonged stay and unneccessary contact with strangers or germs. Liam stayed covered up in his car seat while we quickly walked trhough the almost stranded and quiet food court to BABW. I was pleased that we only passed 1 maybe 2 people total on our way. The store itself was deserted except for the one lady working. I could almost see the rush of air comming out of my mouth as I let go of the breathe I hadn't realized I was holding. We gave Lanie a few minutes of completle attention as she looked for which animal she would create before taking Liam out of his car seat and trying to figure out what he liked. We had to weigh the options and possibilities of each animal. I never realized picking a stuffed animal would be so darn complicated for a baby. He couldn't get the vday puppy because the fur came out easily and he would choke on it. Liam didn't like the monkey, it made him cry even though he loves monkeys. We knew it was specifically the monkey because as soon as we took it away he stopped. We didn't really like the baby blue bear or any of the bears. I thought the safest would be the asthma/allergy bear but no one else liked it and I didn't even like the bear itself. Liam liked the orange cat but I said no because it had whiskers and Liam could choke on them or poke his eyes. My neice was determined we should get a puppy for him so we had to look carefully at every dog and closely examine. Only one dog seemed safe enough so we went with it. Lanie stuffed her limited edition Pink Hello Kitty and bathed it. She's a pro since this was like her 16th BAB. When it was Liams turn, My neice help him sort of stand on the stuffing petal so he could stuff his own puppy and I could take pics. After 4 of us approved the stuffing we all grabbed hearts, made wishes and kissed them before stuffing them into his very special puppy. We even let Liam slobber on one. After we sewed him up, my neice and mother-in-law decided that theyd dress it in camo boxer-briefs and nothing else. They figured that because Liam hangs out in only his "undies" (diaper) that the dog should too and we all love camo. Then after some smooth talking and 'pretty pleases' my neice ended up with a Pink Hello kitty too. I had to laugh. After it was time to name their new friends. Lanie went for the obvious ofcourse and named her's "Kittie", I had to spell it differently since we already had "Big Kitty" and "Little Kitty" at the house. My neice Kayla went even more obvious and named her 'Hello Kitty' lol. We gave Liam's puppy his birthdate and named it 'Monchichi' after his nickname. Since he has monkey toes and looks likea Monchichi monkey we had started calling him that at birth. We were able to make the trip without contact or close passing of any strangers except the BABW employee. I felt very releaved that it had gone so smoothy and so quickly. We encountered no one coughing or no one who appeared sick and that was a blessing. We took a huge chance taking Liam into the BABW and we're very very luck and blessed that God watched out for him the entire way. I will tell you that it is very scary to take a baby like Liam out to such an open and public place and that if I hadn't of already had an idea on how crowded or in our case deserted the mall was I wouldn't have agreed to it and it would have had to wait a long time. The only other reason I took the chance was because when Liam had gotten sick and we ended up at Valley Childrens Hospital and when he cought a bug last month it happened when we hadn't even left the house. It happened when we had been playing it safe and the 4 of us sat at home not going anywhere. We learned that even though you do everything right sometimes it still happens. It was a hard lesson. This doesn't mean we will be taking regular trips to the mall or out shopping because thats not going to happen. I don't feel the accasional outting will hurt as long as we take the proper procausions. As for the mall......Liam won't be seeing it again until way after his 1st birthday! I still much prefer to stay home where we are warm and comfortable and can keep Liam from being over stimulated and safe away from germ toting strangers. Liam also got 2 new developmental toys yesterday while we were out. I bought him a soccer ball that has the different color/texture ribbon tags on them as well as one of those little oballs I think theyre called that is easy for him to grab and very light weight so he can hold on to it and bring it to his mouth. Here are some pics from our trip:

Lanie Building 'Kittie'