Getting Ready for Parker's Birthday!!

Today I have finally started the countdown ~ the countdown to when I have to return to work. I have thoroughly enjoyed my 11 months of maternity leave, however come February 4th, 2013 I will be returning to work (more on this to come). However, on a happier note, today we shopped for Parker's birthday gifts! Even though Parker was in tote, we were still able to pick up a couple of gifts (from The Rocking Horse and Play and Learn - my two new favourite stores) without him knowing, well somewhat ~ we did have to "test" them out!

Parker will be turning one on January 31st and right now he loves vehicles. If he has a train, plan or automobile (woohoo love it!!) in his hand he automatically starts with the vrrrooom vrrooom sounds. So we knew this little man needed some trucks. We have also recently gone through a stage of not liking to look at huge plastic, primary colour toys. Yes, I understand that they help with your child's development and such, however we can only have so many big honkin' plastic toys in our living room. And then... we were introduced to Plan Toys and Hape - we have fallen.in.love with wooden toys! Both of these companies produce toys that eco-friendly. Needless to say, Parker will be getting a couple of new toys from these companies! Today we purchased a dump truck from Plan Toys as well as an xylophone because he loves music and dancing. We also found a cute aeroplane from Hape which I'm sure he will love.

But what really got me excited was my first purchase from Amazon.ca! The kids are in bed and my husband, our cat and our dog are all sleeping on the couch, so I decided to look online for some gift ideas. I love 3 Sprouts and Skip Hop - the designs from these companies are very cute, yet modern and easily fit within any decor. So tonight I have purchased a toy bin from 3 Sprouts, which I plan on using on our bottom shelving unit in the living room, and two bookends from Skip Hop - these are for Parker's room. Rob and I usually discuss all of our purchases, however he will have to wait until the morning to hear about these two. And if purchasing items online wasn't fun enough, Amazon.ca was offering free shipping. Let's just say, this was all I needed to hit the "Add to Cart" button!

The rest of the night will be devoted to some much needed attention to my PVR'd reality TV shows!