Pillow pet

Emily has been really enjoying her box set of The Magic School Bus books.  She was more than thrilled when I found The Magic School Bus on TV and started recording some episodes.  The downside, however, is that the show is not on PBS, which means there are target market commercials.  It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Today Emily absolutely insisted that she needed a Pillow Pet--specifically the unicorn.  She gave me the whole spiel on how it was so soft and cuddly and she could take it to grandma's house.  So we decided to have an object lesson.

The first part of the deal was that after picking up her room, Emily had to choose some stuffed animals to give away.  Emily came up with the number nine herself, so she picked out nine things.  I may or may have not snuck a few extra small ones in the bag. ;o)  Then we counted out the dollars in her piggy bank and put them in a purse.  After Lincoln went down for a nap Emily & I took a little "field trip" (not quite as exciting as on The Magic School Bus, but close).  Our first stop was Goodwill to drop off the stuffed animals for other kids to enjoy.  Our next stop was the bank where Emily had to make a withdrawal from her savings account (which we had set up with her piggy bank money last summer) to cover the remaining cost.  Then we headed to Wal-mart.  I have never seen her so excited to purchase something before.  Wal-mart only had three choices available, but luckily one of them was the unicorn.  Personally, I think the unicorn is one of the ugliest ones, but it wasn't my decision.  Emily proudly carried it around the store and handed her carefully counted out wad of bills to the checkout clerk.  The clerk played along beautifully.

We made it home successfully without dropping it on the slushy ground.  Emily promptly changed out of her fancy dress into her new monkey pajamas and curled up on the couch with her new friend, which she hasn't let it out of her sight yet. 

I figure it was a pretty decent trade-off to get rid of 9+ objects in exchange for one, especially when it didn't actually cost me anything.  It's a good thing, too, because I later discovered it would have been almost $6 cheaper to order it from Amazon.com.  However, it was a good lesson/experience for Emily.  Although, the real lesson will probably be learned when she comes up with the next thing she thinks she has to have and doesn't have enough money to pay for it.  But that is for another day.  Here's to a happy little sleeper! :o)