Uh-oh

I've reached the point in parenthood where I feel it's necessary to spend $30 on a padded cover for the shopping cart seat. (Hey! It doubles as a cover for those grimy restaurant high chairs.) The overpriced baby gear industry is kept alive by people like me. But when going to Target/Costco/Trader Joe's is my most frequent activity, and Gracie loves sitting in the seat but spends all her time gumming the cart handle, and I recently took a 7-hour class on pathogens in which I learned that MRSA can live on a surface for months--well, then, $30 seems like a bargain for an absolute essential!

I must remember that I thought the same thing about a bunch of things that are now in the bin labeled "take to consignment store"--cloth diaper wraps, the Bumbo chair she sat in for two weeks, the head and neck support for the stroller I never used.

But the plush picnic foods playset that enthralled Gracie at the wedding we went to last weekend? Now that is a true essential. I am tempted to ask Ben for it for my birthday. It's just that she so loved chewing on the squishy milk carton!

Then again, she got an even more excited look--of manic glee, really--when I let her chew on a box of crackers in the (unpadded) Trader Joe's shopping cart last week. What do you think is worse: ingesting paper pulp from a cracker box (which could be MRSA-laden) or sucking on plastic toys that are not certified phthalate- or BPA-free?