Yesterday was a study in contrasts. We spent the morning baby-sitting my nephew and the afternoon shopping for a suit for Kristian downtown.
My sister had one request for us as babysitters and that was to keep my nephew awake until noon so as not to throw off his nap schedule. Guess which babysitters let him take an hour long power-nap? Yeah, that would be this dynamic duo. The last time I watched my nephew I got him all hepped up on ice cream and then returned him to his parents a crying, screaming mess. We are undoubtedly the worst babysitters ever. And, yet, they continue to allow us to spend time for them, further proof that my sister is a forgiving, very forgiving, person.
In our defense, the kid was flagging and he loves to nap in his stroller. I did my best to keep him occupied as we strolled to the park. “Look at the doggie! Look at the truck! Look at the man peeing on that building!” (they do live in NYC after-all). Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything all that interesting for a half block stretch. I looked away, I looked back and he was snoozing. I attempted to point out other interesting sights like birdies and small children (everything is interesting to an 18-month-old), but he was firmly asleep by this point.
So, instead of taking him to the park, we took him out to lunch instead. And, by taking him out to lunch I mean that Kristian and I went out to lunch and he slept in his stroller next to our table. He woke up just as we were finishing up. The kid’s got impeccable timing. We rewarded him for letting us enjoy our lunch by taking him to the park and letting him kick other kids in the head. And by letting him kick other kids in the head I mean “swing on the swings, unaware that another small child is running beneath his feet.” My nephew’s feet went right by the other kid’s ears. It was a close call.
So, what does naked babies have to do with all of this? Apparently my nephew has naked time at night when he’s done with his bath, a time that can also be referred to as “climb all over Uncle Kristian time.” Hilarious. I’d post pictures, but you know, internet creeps and all that. Just know that there is nothing more adorable than a small, naked child wriggling around on someone who feels somewhat uncomfortable around kids and is always scared that he’s going to break them.
It was also very sweet to see how Kristian really relaxed and figured out how to relate to my nephew (who so clearly adores his Uncle Kristian).
After we passed off a non-napping child to his grandparents, we headed into Manhattan to do some suit shopping. I’ve always been a firm believer that every man needs a suit and I’ve been bugging Kristian about it for quite some time now. What if he needs to go on a job interview? What if somebody dies? Well, we have two weddings to go to in the next month, so Kristian finally agreed to make a purchase.
Kristian decided that he would spend a little more money and get something at Brooks Brothers. He’s bought other items of clothing there and they were slightly more expensive than their counterparts, but always worth the extra expense. Plus, he gets a corporate discount there. So, it was off to Brooks Brothers’ swanky store on Fifth Avenue. We should have known that suits are a whole other world when we took the escalators up to the third floor of the store and then had to take a tiny little curved staircase the rest of the way to the suit department. It was like a secret entrance.
A helpful salesman put Kristian in a suit that made him look like a million dollars. Unfortunately, he would have to be a million dollars to afford said suit, which cost nineteen hundred dollars. We probably should have looked at the price tag before deciding that we loved it. That damn suit broke both of our hearts.
We told the helpful salesman that we had to think it over and then ran out of there as fast as we could. The moral of the story is: always look up prices online first. If we had known how much more of a markup Brooks Brothers suits have over their regular offerings, we would have gone to Macy’s first, where there were no helpful salespeople (only bitter, jaded salespeople who lied to us and made us stand around waiting for ages for them to come back and tell us their lies), but there were a lot of nice suits, all of them on sale. Kristian bought a lovely BCBG suit for a tiny fraction of the cost of the Brooks Brothers’ one and, if he doesn’t look like a million bucks in it, he looks like at least a three quarters of a million bucks.
He’s going to look fantastic at those weddings.
