the gift that keeps on giving

In December 1983, Helen Mackensen gave 3 month old Brynn Christine Mackensen a $50 savings bond.  Well, I'm sure she gave it to her son and daughter-in-law to take care of and take care of it they did!  28 years later they finally gave it to me for Christmas 2011.  Haha!  I'll have to ask them if they forgot about it, or just hadn't decided to pass it on yet, but either way it was a nice surprise as I don't remember ever hearing I had a savings bond.  The bond was worth just over $100 and I was pretty happy thinking about all the fun things I was going to do with my 100 bucks.  There was a cool nail polish I wanted, my curling iron broke so I thought I'd replace that, a girl always needs new clothes- so maybe I'd save it till I lost some more weight and then reward myself with a shopping trip... oh the possibilities!

Then, just the other day, I came into our room to find Finn STANDING in his co-sleeper, reaching OVER the edge to try and stick his fingers IN the wall socket.

Time to break out the crib.

Geniuses that Jason and I are, when we moved here we put our crib in the very back of our storage unit and piled everything else we own in front of it....

We talked about digging it out- Jason let out a massive *sigh* at that thought.  We talked about buying a mini crib and mattress (seeing as we're short on space and the crib we have is huge) but kids grow out of those too quickly.  And we talked about buying a "full size" crib from Ikea, their cribs are pretty space friendly while not being a mini crib.  We decided to get a new Ikea crib as ours is 10 years old and not in great condition and it's one of those now illegal "drop down side" versions.  We never had an issue with the side falling on its own, quite the opposite- it never went down.  It seemed to be stuck, but you never know.  The move could have jostled it and "fixed" that problem.  We also decided that as Finn had hand-me-downs for everything else: toys, clothes, blankets, high chair, etc. maybe he should get one new thing.  Finn will be in jail the crib for a while still, so it's a good investment.

Issue was we didn't really have the money to buy something new.  Oh wait, who just got $100 for Christmas?

Buh-bye pretty drop earrings, sayonara yellow Crate and Barrel coffee cups.

As much as I like buying pretty little things, I love my kids more.  I really don't want Finn falling headfirst out of his co-sleeper (nor out the side of an old crib) or electrocuting himself.  So off to Ikea we went!

This Christmas, 28 years after she gave the gift, my Grandma bought the great-grandson she never got to meet a brand new crib!