"Do you have anything like that?"

At 6:30 this morning, my 4 1/2 year old Wunderkind came bouncing out of his room wanting to know if it was time to go to the rummage sales yet.

What can I tell you?  The kid is a lot like his Grandpa Superwrench.  He's a social butterfly, he's a collector, he's out there looking for deals and socialization.

So, he and I went online to Craigslist, found a dozen local rummage sales, mapped a route, and counted up all his change.  He had about $15 in quarters, nickles and dimes, all dumped into a big Ziploc-style bag.  He was ready and raring to go.

While I was able to round out Sweetie Babe's summer and fall wardrobe (maybe even winter if she slows her grow a bit!), Wunderkind was looking to round out his stuffed animal collection.

As a side note: I know of some moms who impose limits on the number of stuffed animals each child can own.  I am so not one of those moms.  Wunderkind really digs on stuffed animals.  His imaginative play is often centered around stuffed animals finding themselves embroiled in dire peril, with other stuffed animals (or Wunderkind himself) coming to the rescue.  In order to have all that peril, you really do need a LOT of stuffed animals.  Now I just have to figure out how to store them all.  Watch for that in an upcoming post!

Another thing Wunderkind was looking to do was to bring something nice home to his baby sister that wasn't clothes.  He explained to me that you can't play with clothes.  I guess he's right.  I mean, I've never heard of a t-shirt being in dire peril... wait, that's a lie.  Many of The Mr.'s t-shirts are in dire peril of being put in the rag bin.  OK, then, I've never heard of a t-shirt in dire peril ever being saved by a beanie baby snake named Hissy.  There.  That is a true statement.

At several sales, Wunderkind marched up to the person looking most likely to be in charge and declared, "I'm Wunderkind.  I am four and a half, and I have a baby sister named Sweetie Babe and she's almost 8 months old.  She really likes pink, but not clothes.  Pink toys.  Do you have anything like that?" 

He repeated the message, almost verbatim, until he found a baby bath toy plush frog that ribbits when you squeeze its tummy and a plush flower holding a heart that says "love" betwixt its anthropomorphic leaf-hands.  He deliberated for some time over these two 25-cent items, concerned that, while the frog was, as he put it, "fantastic," it wasn't pink.  I assured him that she would like it just fine if it came from him.

When we got home, he left his other acquisitions lying on the floor of the minivan and bolted into he house clutching the frog and flower.  He held the frog out to Sweetie Babe.  A slow smile crept across her face as she reached out to hold the new frog... and promptly began gnawing on one of its bulbous blue eyeballs.

It was a beautiful moment to behold.

I thought Wunderkind's chest was going to burst right out of his t-shirt.  He was so very, very proud of himself and his toy-choosing prowess.  I'd be lying to you if I told you I wasn't pretty proud, myself.