Shop 'Til You Drop

Today, we packed up the Mazda and took the boys out for a leisurely afternoon at Fairview Mall, after weather delayed last weekend's plans--the boys didn't exactly take to the idea right away (see photo), but eventually came around....

Fairview is just east of the city, and recently refurbished, offers a variety of shops and is far less busy than Yorkdale or (ulp!) The Eaton Center. Other than for a brief jaunt through the aforementioned Eaton Centre while the boys were in St. Michael's Level 2 Nursery, it was my first visit to a shopping centre since last December...

We had an ulterior motive for the trek--with the tax deadline approaching, neither Lidia or I possessed the expertise or desire to plod through the necessary paperwork on our own, and with our boys now a factor in our lifestyles and incomes, we ponied up the cash and sought out the services of experts. The Bay housed an H&R Block outlet, and in under an hour, we got it all sorted out. The boys were with us, alert and breaking hearts, but not enough to convince our assigned accountant to work out a few extra bucks in our favour...try harder next year, boys!

Carter and Nathaniel slept for the bulk of the stroll, but still, passersby stopped to stare and by the time we'd finished the first of two levels I'd perfected my prefab comeback: yes, they're twins, Carter and Nathaniel, Carter's the oldest by two minutes ha-hah-ha, not identical but fraternal, just turned four months old!

At The Children's Place, we bought the boys some fancy new spring duds: denim pants, Vespa shirts, runners, and crocs!

We came up empty on scoring a CD player--seems like the compact disc has become as obsolete as the vinyl LP and cassette tapes. One particular Tiny Tykes model took MP3s directly from the computer, but it had only a 256MB hard drive that I thought was too puny. A nearby kiddie video camera shot only stills but it was also waterproof--for twenty bucks! The Sony camcorder in my hand ost nearly a grand and isn't even waterproof! We did locate a CD player at another toy store, but it was adorned in Hanna Montana logos and crap. So we passed it up--I would've accepted The Simpsons, Batman, Elmo, hell, even WWE--anything but Miley Cyrus!

The boys started to stir on level two so we parked in the newly refitted food court to give Nathaniel his bottle while Carter fell asleep. Once again, the admirers gathered...Nathaniel wooed them all with his bright blue eyes, ready-steady smile, and fashionable faux-hawk 'do (the dog ears on his hood didn't hurt, either). After Lidia and I wolfed down some Thai food for lunch, we decided we'd had it with the teeming masses of humanity and it was time to pack it in...

All in all, a busy weekend. I found a few spare hours to work on an animation for the upcoming Joe Shuster Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards (to which I will contribute a portrait of this year's Hall Of Fame inductee--"X-Men" favorite "Wolverine"), and Lidia visited her mom. We've now taken possession of the car left to Lidia by her father--the car seats are now secured with new Latch system which means for me, some much-needed leg room in the driver's seat....