For many years, I was the Queen of the Shopping List. Nay, the Empress! Or the Sheik? Yes, the Sheik of the Shopping List. (And the Ambassador of Alliteration.) I was very good at both making a shopping list, and, more importantly, sticking to a shopping list. I was in and out of retail stores. I barely knew what sorts of new things were even on the market.

Now I have time to wander.

The doctor says I should offer Babystar ‘finger food’ snacks in between meals each day. And I agree. But the baby doesn’t really like finger food. She only likes purees. Which means that I cut up fruit or whatever for her but she throws it all onto the floor. Sometimes she picks it up and puts it to her mouth out of habit, but then realizes what is happening and quickly pulls the food away from her mouth and pushes it off her tray and onto the floor. So basically I’m just tired of wasting my time. I’ll still offer her finger food, but now I’m more into the pre-made, easy-to pick-up-off-the-floor, for-sale-at-Target varieties. I’m going to try these. ($3.09, $3.22, $3.99.)

Look. One of those is PERFECT. It says so RIGHT ON THE FRONT OF THE BAG.

Also. Every morning, around 4 or 5 a.m., Babystar halfway wakes up and needs to pull my hair. She lifts onto her hands and knees but doesn’t open her eyes, and uses her Baby Sense to crash her face into mine. (I am sometimes awake to see this, and she reminds me of a kiwi bird. From nature documentaries. I’ve never actually seen a kiwi bird.) I am usually NOT awake until the face crash. She then reaches out for my hair, and then runs her fingers through my hair until she falls back asleep. She is not very gentle. And she is never hungry. It’s all about the hair.

So I wandered through Target looking for surrogate hair. Apparently I have this kind of time now. I don’t have time to shower, but I have time to wander the aisles of Target in search of faux ‘mommy hair for nighttime pulling’. Ok. Anyway. I almost bought a stuffed Olaf in a hair-like hula skirt. You know, the snowman from Frozen. (Yes, you do. YES YOU DO.) I guess he was at a luau finally doing what snowmen do in summmmmmmmeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr. But then I found some New and Improved 2016 My Little Ponies. Check out that mane and tail. I’m hoping that the big one will do the trick. And the Littles were on clearance, so I got the Mommy Pony some Babies. ($11.79, $2.49, $2.49.)

(I was really tired, ok? You know, from being woken up at 5am every day for some hair pulling fun.)

RAISING BABYSTAR: $6,532.24