Internet Shopping

My father taught me from when I was little that when you have a question, you look up the answer! I remember being young and asking my dad a question, when he didn't know the answer (and didn't try to just make one up that sounded good) he would say"Look it up". So we would go to the shelf with our set of encyclopedias and see if we could find the answer.

With the explosion of the Internet, research became a lot easier. Now we can ask questions like "what other movie did that guy play in" and other more "useless" questions. Now when we ask a question, the answer is usually "I bet you could find it on the Internet!"

So naturally, having this ingrained into my head from a little girl, when my son lost his monkey my father's words came to mind "I bet you could find it on the Internet!"

I began my search to try and replace the missing monkey. I started at BabiesRus.com since that is where the monkey originally came from back in April 2008. I found a monkey that was described as I would describe Brendan's lost monkey. Little Monkey 10 inch plush rattle. "cheerful chimp, who rattles when he plays, is just the right size for babys tiny hands and just the right furry friend for a bouncing, bundle of joy." Perfect! The only problem is that the picture was not available at the time. But it sounded perfect and was on sale. I got really excited and ordered the monkey.

What arrived in the mail is this monkey:

I'm not sure if you can really tell by the picture but it is NOT Brendan's monkey that we lost. I was very upset. It is made in the same material so it is just as soft as his old monkey, but the "rattle" inside is more of a "Bell" unlike the old one that had a "rattle" sound.

So I went back on the Internet to try again. Brendan's monkey has to be there! You can find anything on the Internet! This time I turned to ebay. I found a monkey that looked pretty close, 11 inches high with a long tail. It was called "Swingsly the Monkey" made by Gund and sold by plushfriends.com. This time I saw a picture, it had to be Brendan's monkey! So I waited and waited (the shipping took forever!) Finally, the package arrived outside our door.

This is the monkey that we got:

Closer, but not quite right.

This time Scott told me I had to stop buying monkeys. In fact he told me I was a little obsessive about this whole monkey thing and said that Brendan didn't need that many monkey and we should save the second one for Caleb. Scott also told me that Brendan didn't know any different. Which is probably true. I wasn't planning on giving the first monkey we received to Brendan because I was so disappointed with the way it looked, Scott didn't realize that I was being selfish and a little crazy (so he says) about the whole monkey thing, and had given the first monkey to Brendan. He is already carrying it around and calling it "His Monkey" so I guess as long as he is happy...

So Brendan has A monkey now, although it is not as compact and cute as his old one, it does take his place. And Brendan loves him just the same. It's a good thing my son is not as discriminatory as I am!

Brendan with his new monkey this morning. "Monkey" (as we so lovingly call him) seems to have taken the place of his much loved predecessor quite well.