Before there was a dossier, there was shopping!

Amid the paperwork and the choosing of names, I have gotten quite caught up shopping for this adventure. Shopping for the baby.. Shopping for the trip.. Shopping for the other kids in the baby house.. Those who are forced to shop with me often (my sister Ann & her son Ronan) know this can be a tedious process: I have to check things out, weigh other options, think about it some more, visit the item at the store 2 or 3 times-- then I plunk down the money.. This is how it goes whether I am buying socks or a crib-- I definitely sweat the small stuff.
So there have been many, many shopping excursions, mostly to Target ('cause what store could be better?!) This is the only place where I have shopped with reckless abandon-- at least in the travel size aisle.. Toilet paper mini rolls, face wipes, Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, Shout-to-go-- those mini packages are so cool! I probably have way to many of them, but who could resist? Then there were the trips to Target and Walmart and Macys and Burlington Coat factory, shopping for the perfect suitcases for pack all my stuff in.. I still don't know if what I have is going to work (I borrowered Ann's big suitcase for most of the stuff and I have a child's suitcase to use as a carryon-- then that child's suitcase will be left for the baby's trip home).. Ronan, by the way, loves to shop for suitcases-- he loves rolling them around, and it is almost impossible to get him out of the department when we are done! Strollers were a big thing too-- Ann has already bought me a great stroller (Maclaren!), but we set out in search of a double stroller that wasn't too big.. I think we found a pretty good one-- I guess we will see when the kids are in it!!Then I had to hit some stores, looking for clothes to bring with me.. It is pretty hard to pack when you don't know what time of year you are going to travel.. By the way, are you sensing a trend here? I would get completely obsessed with getting one aspect of the packing done, and I don't stop with that one item until I have everything I need: a months worth of underwear? Check. Pants for 4 weeks? Check. Books for 30 days worth of reading? Check. (BTW, I found that my local library has monthly sales of paperback books-- I purchased 6 books for $2.50) DVD's? Check. Multiple Russian phrase books I will read but never learn from? Check.
Most of the time I feel like I am just spending, spending, spending-- but there have been a couple of trips when it was me, not the store, who was victorious.. First, there were the gifts.. One weekend, Ann, Ronan & I headed out to the outlets at Riverhead to see what I could pick up there-- and I scored big time.. Leather gloves from Coach for $15 a pair.. And I just about bought out the Bombay Company outlet-- I found 2 beautiful jewelry boxes, a hammer silver teapot, a lipstick case, a candle & snuffer, and it cost me a total of about $70, tax included.. By the time I left that day, I had many of my gifts for the caregivers and had spent only about $100!! Then I hit the Carter's outlet.. If I didn't have to worry about suitcases and the weight of my luggage, I would have bought more, but I picked up at least a dozen warm, snuggly outfits & pjs to donate to the baby house, each about $4.00 a piece.. I found it is really easy and loads of fun to shop for kids when you don't have to worry about the sex, or size, or season of the year! And the crib-- I definitely won there.. I found the crib at Burlington Coat Factory. It is made by Baby Italia, and is just beautiful. I wanted a convertible crib because I don't know the age of the baby yet, and of course those are more expensive.. And it is important (to me) for it to generally match the furniture that is already there, so I spent many a day, trolling the stores looking at cribs.. One Sunday when my committee (Ann & Ronan) was not with me (of course), I found this crib-- but I wanted Ann to see it before I bought it, to see if she liked it and to confirm it matched the existing furniture. So the next evening, we met at the store, she liked it and I was ready to buy it but the "help" at the store was anything but. They weren't sure if they could take it apart, and worse-- they didn't think they had the directions for me to put it back together. So, I couldn't walk out with it.. I check other stores that week, and contacted the manufacturer via email to see if I could get the assembly instructions. I received them, and decided I would go back, so the next weekend, we hit Burlington again and 2 great things happened: the price had already been reduced and the salesperson gave me the floor sample price for a brand new crib still in the box! Giddy does not even begin to describe how I was feeling.. It was great.. So, now that crib is proudly assembled in the baby's room, with the girls' bedding all set up (don't worry, though, I have the boy's bedding all picked out too-- it is just still at the store!)

Even with all this shopping, I KNOW I will end up in Kazakhstan missing something important-- like camera batteries or socks (I know, 2nd mention of socks-- my feet get cold!)

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