Imagination

My husband is notorious for buying Riley something at the store every time he goes with her... which is about once a week. That's a whole other issue really and not something I'll get into in this post, but this post does relate to something he bought for her one day - a couple of cars from the Cars movie: Mater and Holley. Cars is a new phenomena in our house. We now have the movie, a couple books, and are familiar with the characters - Mater being one of her favorites.

My daughter is at that age where she has really started to embrace her imagination. I see her playing with toys in such a creative way and am glad that she can now entertain herself more than she has in the past, but she still needs us to entertain her or be her playmates a fair amount of the time. I often don't mind, but it can also be so exhausting.

From the moment she got home with her new cars she has asked us to 'play Mater'. It's a tiring endeavor as it has required a lot of physical activity, including crawling around on my knees on the hardwood floor, and pretending to be something I am not - an animated tow truck. My body is not made for that. And I'm not sure my mind is either.

Imagination. I'm no good at it.

I try my hardest by using the best Mater accent I have while my husband laughs at me from the other room. I try to think of stuff Mater would say, but after a comment or two I am down to nothing. It's pretty sad.

My husband is better at this than I, but I know it's exhausting for him too. I can't put the imagination type play all on him - partly because he deserves a break, but because I want to be able to play too. I want to have fun with my kid and I want her to think of me as someone she has fun with.

I was talking with a friend recently about this topic and she shared that she's never been good at this even as a kid. Art class was torture for her when she was young, and when she had a child of her own? She struggled through that too. She shared "if someone told me exactly what to do I could do it", but if she had to think of stuff on her own she was totally lost.

I tried Googling for help on this, but no matter how I phrased my search it basically brought me to articles about how to help my child be more creative. And in those articles it said to 'play pretend' with your child, but not HOW to do so.

I've always thought of myself as a somewhat creative person. I have no problem with coming up with art projects (even if the internet is often the inspiration), but I was never an 'actor' so to speak. I've had friends go to improve classes to bring this side out of them, but let's face it - there is a slim chance that I will do that.

Mater and Holley with a bunch of my brother's cars from when he was a kid... and a transformer car that Riley thinks is Lighting McQueen.

So I am trying to embrace my creative side (as small as it is sometimes) as best I can, but in the end I realize that what my kid cares about is if I will "play Mater" or not. It's not so much about how imaginative I am after all. I mean, I once said (as Mater, of course) "I like your tires", and now she says it all the time. She doesn't care that it's a totally lame comment. She just loves that I'm there... playing with her. And I do too.

Now if I could just perfect my Mater accent so my husband stops laughing at me.

Does anyone else struggle with pretend play? What do you do to embrace this time with your kid?

Our kid is a Superstar!... oh, and we bought a car.

I feel really grateful to have the kid I do. We hauled her around to do a lot of things weekend and she was such a trooper. She really helped keep us in a good mood as we faced some frustrating moments. Thank you Riley for being you.

Wearing Daddy's shoes

 This was yet another weekend where we focused on car resolution so we could actually buy a car and replace the Lemon... aka Mazda. Going into the weekend I am pretty sure my husband's frontrunners for a new car was a used 2011 Kia Sorento or a used 2010 Nissan Murano. The Sorento we both drove and liked, but we had yet to drive the Murano. We had driven a different Murano which I liked and he... not so much. I was leaning toward the  brand new 2011 Kia Sportage, myself. I thought it was a pretty good car, it was smaller, it had dual climate control, and it turns on a dime. So Jesse agreed to drive the Sportage again and admitted he did like it. We both had some concerns about it, but they weren't deal breakers.

We decided that before we went any further we had to get a number from the Mazda dealership as to how much they were willing to give us for trade in. Another Morrie's dealerships told us that it was $14,500 in their system and they would have to honor that. However, we thought that was too low. Last week we sent an email stating that we wanted $15,300 or we were going to the Attorney General. We never received a response, but Saturday they upped the trade in price to $15,000. We decided to go with it since there were some other purchasing incentives on the table. We still weren't sure if we were going to buy used, new, or even from a dealership outside of Morrie's, but we were assured that we could go to another Morrie's dealership and the $15,000 would be honored.

On the way home we stopped and drove the Murano. The Murano was top of the line when sold in 2010, but I wasn't impressed. And it was apparent that it was previously owned my a smoker. A serious, hard core smoker. No way was I going to buy this car and I made myself known to Jesse and the sales guy. Pretty sure my attitude was fueled by an empty tummy, tired kid, and a morning at several dealerships.

After food and naps (I took one too) we headed back out to Kia to look at the Sportage. Jesse and I had crunched numbers and compared all the cars pros and cons and decided this was the car for us. When we got there the sales guy headed off to find out what the deal was with the trade in price only to come back (after a long wait) to tell us he could only honor the $14,500 in the system and that he didn't even try to call the Mazda dealership. After a string of foul language ran through my head we left... angry, saddened, disappointed. We left a message for the Mazda sales guy hoping we could still resolve this, but not happy with the overall customer service we had received.

We decided to look outside of Morrie's again and headed over to Honda. Unfortunately, due to the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, they didn't have any new CRV's. We gandered at a used one, but I knew that Jesse wasn't really inspired to get another CRV. While we were there we received a call from Kia assuring us that they would honor the $15,000 now, but we needed to get over there asap to close the deal if we wanted the car that day. I was hungry and tired and really wanted to used the deal I had purchased to eat at the Loop (especially since it was the last day to use it). Curses to car dealerships for not being open on Sundays.

We were told that they would clean up the car while we ran home, grabbed the title and ate quickly. When we arrived the car hadn't been touched yet. Whatever. We'll talk to the finance guy while it's getting cleaned up, right? Not exactly. We had to wait and wait. But finally we were able to meet with the finance guy who listed the car for about $260 more than it was listed on the website. You're not getting that one past me Mr. finance guy! He corrected the price, but downplayed it by saying "it's really only taking about a dollar of per payment". Yeah, but that's still my money buddy.

Anyhoo, there are a lot more details that I could share, but they are either of uninterest or they'd make me get upset. All in all I am just glad it is behind me. We are still connected to Morrie's, but at least we aren't driving a car that we had been lied to about not having been in an accident.

Again, the upside of the whole day was how fantastic our kid was all day long. Outstanding! The only time she got a little pissy was right before lunch/nap time, but so did I. Otherwise she was well behaved and in a good mood all day. She seems to love dealerships. They have lots of room to run around, stairs to climb, play areas, big people chairs to sit in, and bathrooms that echo. All exciting stuff to a 17 month old.

Sitting in a chair like a big girl

Kia's dealership also had this alien cardboard creature that she became fascinated with. She ran up to it, pointed, and said "daddy!". I brought her up close to it, and she was a little apprehensive at first, but then loved to push it to have it bounce back at her.

Thanks to Riley Jesse has now found his doppelganger.

Zoom Zoom

Due to being misinformed when we purchased our Mazda CX-7 a year and a half ago we would like to get a different car. Last weekend we looked at a used 2008 Toyota Rav4 and a used 2007 Nissan Murano. The Rav4 was in really good shape, but as far as features it was quite the downgrade from our current car. The upside was that we had a lot more history on the previous owner of the car. I was a little skeptical about the Nissan as we drove a Nissan Rogue when we bought the Mazda CX-7 and I didn't like how claustrophobic I felt in the car... or the poor visibility. So going into driving this Nissan I had low hopes and Jesse had high hopes. Turns out the car exceeded my expectations, but were far below Jesse's expectations. Out on both.

This Saturday we dropped Riley off at Grandma Suzie's so we could do some car power shopping. Because of the deal we are trying to secure with Morrie's Mazda we were told that we could look at cars at any Morrie's dealership. Our car guy said that we would have to find cars, tell him about them, and he would go pick them up. Something about stepping on toes... But our guy was out of town so we just went to other dealerships and explained the situation before driving any cars. They can fight it out themselves.

First stop was Morrie's Hyundai. Jesse immediately poo poo'd the Tucson so we drove the Sante Fe. After an unimpressive drive of the 4 cylinder we took a spin in the 6 cylinder. It was a pretty nice car to drive, but it was hard to get past the ugly interior. We just aren't wood panel people.

Next we went to Morrie's Kia. We drove the Sportage and would have liked to drive the Sorento, but they didn't have any more 2011 models (the 2012 models are out of our price range). We both really liked the Sportage, but the interior had some cheap features. I didn't notice it as much as Jesse did until I looked in back where there was a styrofoam storage unit. Cheap. However, this car was a pretty nice drive in a smaller, but decent sized compact utility vehicle. It turned on a dime (which was sweet!), but after having a car with turbo it seemed a little snail'ish when accelerating.The best part was the dual climate control. Jesse says this could save our marriage. Now if I could only get that installed in the bedroom...

At both dealerships we were told conflicting information and additional information that was not shared by our original sales guy. We did discover that they aren't willing to give us what we requested for trade in. However, we still need to talk to our original sales guy to confirm this. Also, both dealership lots were really bare. There weren't a lot of options to choose from. We were told that the factories couldn't keep up with the demand. This bummed us out a bit, but we still got a feel of what to expect out of a Hyundai and a Kia.

Later in the day Jesse decided to go to a non-Morrie's dealership to look at some used 2011 Kia Sorento's. I was worried that they would be a little too big so I wasn't too excited about this. While on his test drive he came home so I could take it out for a spin. I actually liked it (minus the big hood).It was a nice drive and has some decent feature (AWD being an important one for me). It still feels like a bigger car than we need especially with the third row seating (that tucks away). Seating for 7... but there are usually only 2 - 3 of us in the car at any given time. It makes me feel like a hog. And please don't suggest I should have more kids to fill it up.

Right now, I think we are leaning towards the Sorento, but this seems to change hourly. We have decided that we are going to look at Honda CRV's as well. You never know we might end up with two CRV's since I still have my 1998 CRV!

While looking at new cars is kinda fun it is also frustrating that we have to put out a chunk of money to get a different vehicle. I'm not one to get new cars often so this is killing me a little bit. In fact, I had my first car for 11 years (1991 Chevy S-10 Tahoe) before selling it and I still have my second car (going on 11 years). That makes the Mazda my third car. That's right. I am almost 40 and have only had 3 cars... soon to be 4. Hopefully, whatever we select will be a keeper and I won't have to buy another car until 2022.