The Great Highchair Capers

Ever since he started eating "solids", D has been using either his Bumbo or a portable highchair some friends graciously gave us. Although both have worked ok, it was becoming clear that an actual highchair was necessary to contain D and his messes. The Bumbo...well, it is clearly not meant to be associated with food as evidenced by this post. Additionally, while the portable one will be great for when we take D out to dinner, it is clearly not meant to be used full-time as it easily allowed for slouch-to-the-left and slough-to-the-right sessions to try and spy the "kitties" as they went about their daily rituals...which of course involve distracting D when he is trying to eat. We thought buying a highchair would be fairly simple...there are a million different varieties, colors, shapes, sizes, etc. We piled D into the car and after a trip to the park, we headed out to the local used-baby store. They only had a few available, but one of them stopped us dead in our tracks. Lets just say that the highchair had dinner leftovers from 1999 plastered all over it...and WAS ON THE FLOOR FOR SALE. You have to be kidding me right?! This same store wouldn't take one of my boppys for credit because it had a bleach stain (which was there when I inherited it) on it...they assumed I hadn't washed it. Huh?????? Anyhow, that was enough to send G and I running as far away as possible and we will NOT be returning. We then tried Babies R Us figuring the Baby Super Store would surely have something. After perusing the highchair isle and making our selection, we then learned that it was the only one not in stock. Of course...why should it be?! This same thing happened when we wanted to buy a carseat from this store as well. Grrrrrr. I figured we could find the same one on-line or at Target, so we left and headed home since D was hungry. I looked on-line and it seems that the highchair we selected must be a discontinued model because not only could I not find it on-line, the actual manufacturer web-site no longer had it either. The only place I could locate it was eBay, which would mean an additional $30 shipping fee (no thanks) or Craigslist in Philadelphia and the seller would only take "pick-up"...ummmm, nope! So, I headed out to Target to see what they had to offer since it was clear we weren't going to be able to get the highchair we had settled on. I found one I liked, but didn't buy it because I wanted to make sure G agreed. He said fine and went down to purchase the chair. Well, they only had two boxes and he said they both looked like they had been opened and re-sealed. He checked and the sales associate said they had most likely been returned. Not a good sign. So, G headed off to another store in search of the highchair. The next store didn't have it so he went to another store. This store, a different Target, did have the highchair in an unopened/unreturned box. G called to make sure we still wanted to get it, and then asked if maybe we just wanted to get our "dream" highchair instead, since it wasn't that much more expensive then the one we had picked in lieu of the out-of-stock/manufacture chair. I said yes, why not. The "dream" chair is one my brother and sister-in-law have and have really liked, but was a little more $$ than we had originally wanted to spend. But, after all the fiasco yesterday, D had his first-ever true highchair experience this morning and had a ball...so did mom!!!