The New Nelsons

Well, I am a big sucker for a cute little guy - who knew? Today, T.J. and I went and got his hair cut because he was getting a little shaggy. I told the lady to cut it a little shorter than last time because it grows so fast, and she sure did. He has quite the buzz cut. Good thing it grows fast!

Then, we went to the mall. I had to pick up my contact lenses, and we decided to make a whole event of it. We did not take the stroller (a first for us at the mall) and he was SO excited to have free roam. We went by the pet store to see the dogs and, little did I know, the pet store was having quite the hermit crab sale. There were kids all over the place looking at all these crazily painted hermit crabs. There were little stools all around and T.J. was lucky enough to get one, and I could hardly get him down from there when we finally had to leave. We were seriously standing there for about 45 minutes, and each minute was as fascinating as the next! The sucker that I am, I told him that if we could go get some lunch and finish our shopping, then we might come back and get a hermit crab. I figured with all of his progress with potty training, he deserved a treat. Plus, how could I not want to get him something that made his face light up like that?

So, we had lunch, picked up the contacts, and went into a few more stores.Then - as I was repeatedly reminded - we went back to pick out our own hermit crab ("Herman" crab as T.J. calls them). They had quite the deal on them (I'm pretty sure some worker went way overboard on the hermit crab bulk order!!) so we got all of the food, set-up, 2 "herman" crabs, 2 empty shells for them to crawl into, and a VERY big smile on a sweet boys face for a bargain price of $14.95!! Picking out just the right shells was quite the big decision, but T.J. decided on an Elmo shell, a Nemo shell, a Batman shell, and a shell that looks like a baseball.

He is completely fascinated with these things! I was a little nervous at first because they can pinch, but there is NO danger of that with our little cautious fella. He loves to look at them in their cage or for me to pick them up from a good distance away from him, but he will in NO way reach in and touch one. They're actually pretty cool little easy pets so we'll see how long the interest stays! When we were leaving the mall with the herman crabs in tow, anyone that even looked our way, T.J. would say, "T.J.'s herman crabs" as he pointed to them. He also wanted to hold the cage on the drive home, but settled for having them on the floorboard under his feet. The whole way home he kept talking to the cage, "You o.k. herman crabs?" At naptime he had to tell each one of them good-night. "Night, Night, Elmo crab." "Night, Night, Nemo crab." "Night, Night, Batman crab." "Night, Night, baseball crab." He doesn't quite understand yet that there are only 2 crabs, so we are also saying good-night to 2 empty shells - Oh the things we do for our kids!!