I've Got To Start Some Traditions...

I am giving away a $25 Target Gift Card and a whole bunch of back to school type stuff here.

If you're up with Disney Princesses, I'm also giving away a family four pack of tickets to Disney on Ice in Chicago for the Wednesday September 8 performance here.

I have a new Seventh Generation prize pack filled with cleaning supplies for your back to school needs that I'm giving away here.

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I'll explain why I need traditions in another post, but let's just have this one show something I did with the wee ones last week that I think is going to become a part of our back to school tradition. Because I suppose that should be more than making them stand on the stoop and smile into the sun, right?

Needless to say, we headed off to Build-A-Bear, since I'd heard that they had the Sanrio pets debuting and were giving out cute little backpack clips for those who made the pets. Since Little Miss has a Keroppi backpack, I figured this was win-win all the way around. We headed into the store, and Mister Man was ohhhhh-so-proud to show Little Miss what to do.

Unfortunately, that dream of Sanrio pets was apparently mine alone.  Neither of the wee ones wanted to do Keroppi. Or Hello Kitty. Or Chococat.  Or Melody.  I have no idea why, but since this was for them, I allowed them to choose any animal in the store they wanted.  Oddly, they both chose the cheapest option (with no input from me whatsoever), the $10 Cub bear.

Mister Man also chose a karate uniform for his bear, which I thought was sweet since he's now so into his tae kwon do.  He had a hard time deciding initially since there was no Princess Leia costume yet, but once he was this one, he was hooked.

Little Miss wasted no time in finding the Toy Story costumes and picked out her Buzz Lightyear outfit in a heartbeat.  Did I mention the 9 times in fourteen nights they watched Toy Story while they were in Florida?

Once the animals and outfits were chosed, it was off to the stuffer.  They were so pleased to help stuff their bears and do the little heart pledge and warmup.  I love how Build A Bear makes the children really a part of creating their pet.

From there, it was time to clean the bears.  Not surprisingly, Little Miss was wayyyyyy more into making sure her bear was perfect.

Mister Man did his, too, but he was so excited to get to the next stage that he ran off to it before I could get to the bath.  I made him come back and "fake pose" for a picture.  He was so thrilled to be making a bear of his own choosing that he took a decent picture our first shot.  Phew!

After that, it was time to get the bears dressed - an important thing that the wee ones wanted to do on their own.  Well, at least until Mister Man couldn't get the black belt off the karate costume (it was sewn on, but he wanted to put on the orange belt because he is an orange belt) and Little Miss couldn't do the shoes on her own!

Meet Karate Chops, the newest addition to our menagerie.  He is a defensive warrior who helps protect Mister Man's room from invasion but never uses his karate moves to purposefully hurt anyone.

Little Miss (and yes, we got her hair cut immediately before Build A Bear, which explains the new bangs and the fact that she has a really cute ponytail) was really proud of how well she could dress her bear.  The hard thing for her was having to take everything off to put on Buzz's pants first. (PS Build A Bear, I love how you have the little straps to go over the arms to help keep pants up - genius!)

And meet Buzz Lightyear, a space ranger protecting the universe from the evil emperor Zurg - who we hope never comes anywhere near our house.

The coolest part about this is that Mister Man went through the registration process entirely by himself.  Granted, it took him some time to type in all the info required, but he did it.  And I love that he did it and didn't ask for help.  We had nowhere we needed to be, so I let him have his time to do it, and he was so proud.  I need to remember to continue to back off and let him try!

Once we were done, we had a new family photo with our new friends.  Note that Karate Chops is doing a karate kick in the photo.  He was "showing off his defensive moves" according to Mister Man.  Little Miss, on the other hand, was just excited to get home and introduce Buzz to Snowy.

In the past week, I can't count how many times I've been asked when we're going back to Build A Bear. This is the first time I've allowed them such freedom in the store, and they are smitten. I've recently instituted a new reward system (yes, a post will come on that soon) where one of the things they can earn is a Date with Mommy. I have a feeling this is going to be one of the requested dates.

Or maybe I should just save it as a special back to school tradition. What a great way for them to remember every year and what they were super interested in at the time. Nahhhhh, we'll be back sooner than next August!

(And no, I was not paid or compensated for this post at all, nor did anyone ask me to write it. This was purely inspired by our fun trip to Build A Bear and my desire to create fun and lasting traditions for the wee ones.)