Unabashed Tomfoolery! (UNABASHED, I say!)

Ezzie Boo is such a ham. He's discovered the THRILL of closing his eyes while walking. And while this pastime is quite amusing for him, it makes momma as nervous as a cat on rollerskates. Why is it that he heads straight for sharp corners the second he closes his eyes? It appears to be some yet-to-be-discovered Law of Physics, where:

Sharp Corner + Child With Eyes Closed = Imminent Contact.

Surely this 'hobby' of his can't last too long... If he keeps this up, my hair will be gray by next Tuesday.

Also, he's taken a sudden liking to having his picture taken. So much so, that he will strike a pose somewhere and continue to hold it until I can locate the camera, come back to where he is, set up the shot, and take his picture. Then he runs over (with much glee) to see the picture on the digital camera screen. It's so cute it hurts.

Example:



And Again, shown here:



He is so very, very fantastic.

In other news, we went to see Santa at the mall. It was Black Friday, so I was preparing myself for a 16 hour wait in a line that stretched from the BabyGap all the way to Kansas. Yet, when we rounded the corner, we were shocked to see NO LINE AT ALL. None. Yippie! No line! How can this be?? After entering the roped off area, however, we quickly discovered why we were on our own. There was some definite racketeering going on there.

First, the guy at the counter asked us if we wanted a picture with Santa, or if we just wanted to visit with him for free. We all said, "Picture, please!" because, um, isn't that the whole point? the cute picture you get to pull out years later and show prom dates? Duh?

He replied, "Okay, just enter this line here, and there's a price sheet down there around the corner."

Translation: You don't know how much we're going to charge you until it's too late to get back out of line. (If there had been a line, we would have been standing in it for about a half an hour before we would have been able to see this "price sheet". Who would want to wait that long and then back out when they finally could see that one 5 x 7 picture would only cost TWO HEALTHY LIMBS?)

We decided to go the cheapest route and just get the picture put on a CD... no prints included. After we got our picture with Santa (made tolerable for Ezra only through candy bribery), we went over to the checkout, where a very nice girl proceeded to tell us that it would actually be cheaper for us if we added a print to the package.

"Ok, Great!" I said happily. "Cheaper is good. I kindof need these limbs for things like walking and sipping wine."

"Sure thing!", she chimed back. "That will be a total of $28.93!"

"I'm sorry, wha?????"

30 DOLLARS FOR ONE PICTURE?!

Turns out, she had been sneaky with her wording when she said 'it will actually be cheaper'. She had meant that the picture CD would be cheaper, but didn't bother to mention that the 'added print' would be another $15.00 or so ON TOP OF THAT...

YIKES.

Something smells bad at the North Pole. The stench of trickery and unabashed tomfoolery. (that, and the drifting scent of corn-dogs from the food court.)

We changed our order back to the CD ONLY and fled from the North Pole before they had a chance to take more of our money.

In the end, though, it was all worth it. Simply because of this:



THIS may have been worth those exorbitant rates because, this?

This is PRICELESS.