September 16, 2012 - Build-A-Bear

We ventured out to the Greenwood Park Mall today to visit the Build-A-Bear Workshop and make Grayson a bear to give him when we go over to Taiwan. We're going to keep him in our house and hope that the bear starts smelling like we do so that he can recognize our smell when we are not together and get used to us. A long time ago, Lindsay went to Build-A-Bear and got a recordable piece that could be inserted into the hand of the bear. We finally were able to make it back up to the mall to make the bear and put our message in the bear. We picked the standard teddy bear to use for Grayson's first teddy bear. It just seemed more like his personality than all the others. Not really sure how we could tell his personality by not actually meeting him, but nonetheless, this seemed like the right one. Once we picked out the bear, we had to go over to the "Stuffing Station." The lady put our recordable thing into the hand of the bear and then she started stuffing the bear. While she was stuffing the bear she asked who the bear was for. We got to tell her all about our journey to being matched with Grayson. She was really excited for us! Once it was all stuffed we had to put the hearts into it. We both put one inside the bear in case you were wondering why it would have two hearts. :) She was so nice as she asked us to put the hearts into the bear. She told us to warm up the heart by blowing on it.  At this time, we kind of looked at each other thinking that this is really odd, (if you were watching us, you would have been laughing hysterically by the way). We decided to follow her directions. So we rubbed the heart in our hands and started to blow on it. Then we had to rub it on our knees so the bear would run fast. Then rub it on our heads so it would be really smart. Next, we had to rub it on our hips so it would be a good dancer. There were a few others in there, but she went so fast that we don't even remember them. We were rubbing hearts all over our bodies. I'm sure it was quite comical to watch us. We then stuck the hearts in the bear and she sewed him up.

We moved on to picking out some clothes for him. We picked out some simple jean overalls. I think it was an nod to our midwestern roots. We thought it would look good on Grayson, too.

We then got to print out the birth certificate. We paid for him and off we went.