Build-A-Bear

Let me preface this post by saying "Why didn't I think of this???". Such a simple idea with such immense monetary rewards. For those of you who have never been to Build-A-Bear, it's pretty cool; you pick out an animal "skin" of your choice (and they have many, many choices!), get it stuffed then pay for it. If you want to you can even pick out a little outfit for him! Something that costs Build-A-Bear about $2 to buy ends up costing you $25 and up to own! And that's without the $20 team-of-your-choice outfit! BRILLIANT!


Anyway, so we took Jake to this gold mine- I mean toy experience for his 1st birthday, not that he really cared. We stuck with our monkey theme and got him a...you guessed it- a monkey! His daddy helped him pick it out.

For an extra $3-$5 you can pick a sound to put inside your animal. We chose a monkey sound.

Then we took it over to the nice lady at the stuffing station to get it stuffed. This is my favorite part; you get to watch your animal get stuffed- while that's being done you pick up a little heart cut out and warm it in your hands. Then you kiss it and place it in the stuffed animal right before they sew it up! So cute. Jake was totally enthralled in the stuffing machine.

Daddy hugs!

Jake was amazed watching his monkey be "born".

"It's almost done!! Here he comes....!!"

"Huh. Ok. Well, I guess you'll do for now- I suppose we can be buds."

After he was all done and sewn up we took him over to make a birth certificate for him. We had to pick a name to give him so we went with the most obvious name. Monkey. I'm glad Jake and Monkey can share a birth date! Pretty cool, huh? Jake wasn't so sure...

"Look dude, I'm cool being buds or whatever but I am NOT cool with you riding in the stroller with me."

"Get.Out.NOW."

So I guess he wasn't as excited about Monkey as I was. I hope he gets used to him being around for a while! I'm growing quite attached myself!

How can you not love this face?

While we were waiting in line the little girl in front of had made a birthday bear too, so they took her to the center of the room and let her ring a bell really loud. We all clapped and said Happy Birthday to her. I was so choked up about it I couldn't even talk, I just clapped. I knew there was no way I could do that for Jake without turning into a puddle on the floor so we didn't mention that it was his birthday. I hope he can forgive me.