Putting the T in Toddler Time

Today was an awesome ending to our vacation. Tomorrow we'll get in the car and travel back home. But today, we drove down to the Mayfair Shopping Mall in the suburbs of Milwaukee and bought X-man some new tennis shoes. Because Champaign has no children's shoe store to speak of any more. Last April he was an 8.5 XW. Now he's a 9.5XW. He didn't want to go buy the shoes until I made him a deal.

"Xander, if you help Mommy get you new shoes, we'll go down and BUILD-A-BEAR." He didn't know what one was until today. I'm not joking when the kid ran into Stride Rite, played with the toys waiting for his turn. He tried on two pairs of shoes, ran around in them, let the guy check them out and then CHOSE the shoes he wanted. He picked out a special bear and had a great time helping put in the fluff and giving it a bath before we made a "birth certificate" for it. 

Afterward we ate Subway in the foodcourt. X-man loved that they had a live piano player to listen to. Then we left and drove downtown to the Betty Brinn Children's Museum. We used our reciprocal museum membership from the Orpheum, so we got in "free" and saved $18. Plus they gave us a $2 discount off parking, so technically the whole thing cost $3 for parking. X-man had a blast. We were there for 2.5 hours, and X-man was wiped when we left. 

Then we picked up some dinner and frozen custard from the Drive Thru at the Harley Davidson store in Sheboygan before coming home to watch some movies. 

I'll have photos and a review of the children's museum a bit later.