We aren’t football fans so even though the Colts were in the super bowl we decided to flee all the televised commotion and head to Ann Arbor (our favorite little city to escape to, at least within 3 hours) and do some major Ikea shopping. (photos courtesy of my iphone and the Shake It Photo Ap)

We have wanted to hit up Ikea for a long time, but have been afraid to take on such a huge shopping task with Miles underfoot. We finally decided to just go nuts and tackle it with Miles over two days. We were totally surprised that we ended up having an absolute BLAST! All of us. Even Miles. There’s just nothing like the excitement of rolling up to Ikea.

The one in Ann Arbor is smaller than the one in Chicago, but instead of being tall, with multiple floors, it is more spread out, and only has two floors. So that means less going up escalators. For me, I like that the food is usually on the same floor as you or only one floor away. That was important this time as that is key to keeping going on a long shopping trip, especially if you are three….or pregnant. (Or just like me, and you usually have to eat every 2 hours anyway.)

This photo makes Ikea look like a best buy….but just trust me, even a small Ikea is a great experience.

We had lots of shopping goals: Miles’ big boy bedroom, some studio space stuff and something to tame our home office and kitchen. We weren’t able to get everything this go around, and even though we filled an entire van, we will have to go back. Though we have plennnnty of pieces of furniture that we need to assemble to keep us busy for a while. (Ok, who am I kidding, John will assemble it all!)

Miles totally BLEW us away with how great he was. He was a serious shopping ROCK STAR. We stopped from time to time and let him flop on beds, try the kids stuff or play hide and seek in the “clouds.” (Playing in the clouds = Pop in and out of the rows of down comforters.) So it took twice as long as a regular trip, but he was (thankfully) not amongst the sea of kids who were screaming. We did have the movie Cars downloaded to our iphone, which helped immensely when we were stuck in a super boring area choosing stuff like adjustable office chairs and obsessing over tons and tons of options and details.

Speaking of screaming kids, and there were plenty, (one girl was actually screaming, “GIMMIE DADDY! GIMMIE!” over and over) that when we encountered one, Miles would sometimes look at them and say, “No! Stop crying!” He hates crying kids, that’s for sure. (We are raising such a compassionate child, aren’t we?) So I suppose this spring we’ll have to do some sort of cry tolerance training or something before King Baby 2.0 gets here. There’s a whole story about why Miles hates crying kids, but I’ll spare you the details. He basically had something scare him about a year ago and so he’s becoming less and less afraid of crying kids as we get further away from that experience.

Back to shopping: The first thing we wanted to make sure we got was Miles’ big boy bedroom. We had already picked a bed ahead of time online, but wanted to make sure we liked it when we saw it in person. Well, imagine our surprise when we were ten feet away from it and Miles, who I swear I had never showed it to him before exclaims, “THERE’S MY BED!” Well, indeed it was. We popped him out of the cart and let him climb up into the bed and he fit perfectly. Awesome. It was in stock and so was a fun red painted dresser and a cute little side table with a door, perfect for filling with matchbox cars. Done and done!

Here’s the bed we got for him. I love that it has drawers underneath. It can expand to a full size bed too, if we ever want to do that.

We looked at bedding and Miles wasn’t a fan of any of them, but he did choose this one. He said, “I like the black and white one!” After verifying about 5 times that that indeed was what he liked, John and I did a high five for the fact he picked something cool. I’m not uptight about interior design at all. At $20, if this duvet ends up all stained and we are all over it, I’m totally fine with that. If so, we get to go shopping again!

By the way, I’m in my second trimester now! Woo hoo! Here’s a belly shot I took while waiting in line for the family bathroom. Or as Miles would call it, “The quiet bathroom.” Ikea has these crazy loud hand dryers in their bathroom that scared the crap out of Miles. It doesn’t help that they make kids scream with either laughter or fear, so that doubled Miles’ reason to hate them. So we spent lots of time waiting to use the quiet bathroom. Sorry, I haven’t mastered the self portrait on the iphone where I actually look at the camera and can smile. It’s kind of tricky.

I will say, that things did get hairy on the last day of our shopping trip when it reached 4 PM. Miles was practically hunched over the cart handles falling asleep, I was starving, tired and thirsty. (I had already burned through two trips to the cafeteria and through my snacks and water in my purse.) So I did have to make a run for emergency snacks so we could at least pick a lamp up for the studio and get what we needed from the self serve basement before we checked out. I also didn’t wear shoes that were super comfy, so my feet and legs were ouchy. (DUH! Next time, wear running shoes!) We really didn’t have the energy to consider anything fun or creative for lighting (boo!) which is one of the great things about Ikea, and it KILLED me to have to just rush past the picture frame and candle department. (Tears!) I’ll definitely have to go back.

I’m telling you, the place is like Disney World. You can’t even fully experience it in two days. At least not with a three year old in tow. (and not have him in tears!)

I was so surprised over and over how much fun we had and how great it felt to get out of town for a couple of days. We have been dog sitting for the past six weeks, so the dog hair from 3 dogs had overwhelmed me and the fact that we have been in transition with our studio space has had me batty too. So I just needed to get away and it was exactly what I wanted. Now, granted, our house is EVEN MORE full of studio stuff and we are in even MORE of transition now, as we wait for the studio to be completed. However, I feel like I can handle it a bit more, having logged some one on one time in with my boys. I’ll keep you posted on the studio space. There was an on-site injury of the head construction guy last week and John will be heading to New York soon for a creative project, so I’m not holding my breath for moving in anytime soon. I do know that every week that passes, we get closer and closer to being in. Me, my gear and the 9 million Ikea boxes are all eagerly waiting for it to get done!

PS As I flip back over this blog post, I can’t believe how boring it is! Sorry! Guess I’m in the mood to just babble tonight.