The Baby Gift Quest

I spent nearly the entire day today running all over creation looking for a gift for my new baby cousin, Emile, who my parents will be visiting in New Orleans next week (along with other assorted family members).

Now, on the off chance that someone associated with that group reads this blog post, I cannot actually disclose the object for which we were searching...that would kind of take the surprise element out of the gift.  But, I can tell you that I think it's adorable and lovely.

My mom and I set out on this quest together, following a hearty restaurant breakfast, which served us well even though at that point we didn't know the folly into which we were entering.  In the first store we went to, my mom had the idea for the gift...unfortunately, the item that we were looking at had some imperfections, and so we decided to look for something similar elsewhere.  This quest would take us to the following locations throughout the course of the day:

-Hobby Lobby
-Home Goods
-Marshalls
-Target
-Babies-R-Us
-World Market
-Wal-Mart
-Toys-R-Us
-Bed, Bath, and Beyond
-Weekends Only
-Ashley Furniture
-Seasonal Concepts

Anyone familiar with West St. Louis County will be able to imagine how much gas we used up as we criss-crossed this side of town in its entirety searching for what we (perhaps naively) thought would be an easy product to locate.  By the time we got to Weekends Only, my feet were painfully blistered up from the flats that I was wearing, and my mom and I were both getting tired and frustrated.  It is perhaps for this reason that when an overly persistent salesman started (literally) following us around the store with the usual "My name is so-and-so, welcome to Weekends Only, where everything is blah blah blah, and can I help you find anything today", I started to snap.  I abruptly stopped in place, turned on my heel to face this persistent salesman (almost knocking him out with my left elbow as I stuck my hand dramatically on my hip), and said a bit too emphatically "DO YOU SELL ______ HERE???"  The poor man just blinked at me, and maintaining his overly helpful demeanor, said "Well, you're in the right section if we DID sell those here.  Perhaps I can interest you in..."  Unfortunately, he couldn't interest us in whatever that was, and my mom quickly said "OK, thank you," and we shuffled back out the door.  Unsurprisingly, my mom banished me from going into the last two stores, suggesting instead that I stay in the car and "rest."

Anyway, you'll be happy to know that eventually we DID find the item that we were looking for, after returning home defeated and calling stores all over the area, and then going BACK out to purchase said item. Ironically, the thing we ended up getting is exactly what we first wanted...just from a different store.  And the gift is all adorable, so I suppose our hard work paid off.

Perhaps if you stay tuned to this blog, you'll find out what this mysterious item was.  Ooh...cliffhanger.