The neighborhood bag lady.
Why, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I often let Everett run around with a messy face and dirty clothes, I happened upon a fantastic find--in a rather unusual place.
It was a beautiful playgym, complete with fabrics of different textures, floppy animal ears and flowers, crinkly sounds, and a battery-operated music player that is activated by a few key touch pads underneath the fabric. It was in pristine condition, and when I saw it I immediately wondered why anyone would throw it out.
Throw it out, you say?
Well, yes. Someone in my building had (ahem) discarded this lovely item alongside the trash, which had all been kindly deposited on the curbside for early morning pick-up.
(please notice that I did say "alongside", rather than "amongst" or "heaped with moldy banana peels and left to fester and rot.")
Uhm, before I go any farther, I feel the need to clarify something: we have a "trash room" in our building. This consists of a cement room (with very clean floors) and a few well-kept trash cans. The baby item was presumably laid against a wall in that room and taken out with the rest of the trash, as is customary, or I would have found it bagged with the regular trash. Or wait. I wouldn't have found it at all. Please erase the image of me dumpster-diving for a few teething rattles from your mind. Thank you for your consideration on this matter.
Fortunately, after a good washing (did I mention that it was a very good washing? unnecessarily thorough, even?), I felt comfortable letting Ashley play on it. And play she did. She just loved grabbing at the toys dangling above her (no toys came with it, so we used some of our own), and immediately wowed us all with her mad reaching and rolling skills. Well, actually, I don't know if Everett was so very wowed, but I liked seeing her enjoy it so much.
Funny thing is, when I called Joel to tell him about my "amazing find," all I had to do was say sheepishly: "So, guess what I did."
Joel (who had seen the playgym out there on the way to work) immediately responded in horror: "....you didn't...."
Well, yes. I did. And someday when Ashley is old enough to talk, I'm sure she'll thank me profusely for saving her favorite toy from utter putrescent destruction. I'm just sure of it.
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6 comments:
That is awesome!! I know what you mean about having kids with messy faces. We have nicknamed Oakley Wednesday Child, saying she looks homeless. Chanel 2 does a thing on Wednesdays to adopt a child. You can tell she is my 4th, I just don't care anymore.
You Rock! Way to go! Another woman's trash is another woman's treasure. Gotta sieze the moment!--Whatever it takes to entertain the kids.
hooray for dumpster diving. we furnished our house that way in college. married housing even had a "freebie bin" awesome find!!
Elise, looks like you had a lot of fun fishing. If you were here and caught fish, David would be a great person to cook the meal. He enjoys cooking and does very well at cooking. On our vacation he prepared a seven layer dip for part of our meal. The presentation was very good and it tasted delicious. I know we have some picky eaters in our family, so maybe if all of my kids had been with us there would have been one or two that would have bypassed a great food choice. (I won't mention any names).
Way to go Elise! You totally scored. And I think its totally respectable that you dug through a garbage can to find that gem. . . wink wink.
Awesome. I always wanted one of those but didn't want to cough up the money. We actually gave her some balloons to play with and it really increased her eye tracking skills.
She is so cute! I love how she looks like a miniature you. Just don't tell call it her trash toy and she won't be scarred for life.
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