An FAO Schwarz Afternoon

Our plans for yesterday changed at the last minute, so we were faced with a planless day. "Hey wait!" I said. "Remember that Make-A-Muppet thing we read about? Let's take Thora to FAO Schwarz and make a Daddy muppet." So we did.

The weather was perfect. Cool and crisp like a November afternoon should be. We took the subway down to Columbus Circle and walked across Central Park South from the west side while Thora and Freyja both napped. And then we were there.

At the Muppet Whatnot Workshop, you pick your muppet's skin color, eyes, hair, nose, clothing, etc., and build your muppet however you want. And then you pay the exorbitant fee ($99) and you get to watch your muppet be made right in front of you.

And here is our Johnny muppet being made. We checked to make sure his jacket wasn't leather.

Here he is all done up and ready to go:

And here he is with his wife at home:

But the real showstopper of the day is Thora tearing up FAO Schwarz. She couldn't believe her good fortune. Everything was exciting and no one minded that she touched absolutely everything she saw.

Hello Kitty section. She kept saying that these Hello Kitty dolls were heavy. They were, especially compared with the teeny tiny one she has at home.

Mama nursing stealthily in a Harry Potter wizard's hat:

 The Ugly Doll store. Thora loves Ugly Dolls. She has a few. She found all the ones she has at home and about a half a dozen more.

A perfectly Thora-sized elephant!

Reaching for something.

The Big Piano:

The vehicles section. An employee playing with a remote control car got her all riled up driving it into her feet and around her in circles.

FAO Schweetz:

The Lionel train section (plus balloon sword #3, she popped the other two):

And on the way out,  we found lions and tigers but no bears. Kiss the tiger?

En garde!

Too shy to ask the toy soldier doorman for a photo, though everyone else did!

This was a perfect afternoon. She was absolutely overjoyed the whole time. Johnny remarked to me that Thora probably had more fun there than we both did during our entire childhoods put together. It was like being in a big toy museum, one where you could touch everything. Most of the employees were delighted by her and had fun showing her different things to make her light up. The best part? Thora happily kissed everything she loved goodbye (and no one yelled at us for encouraging her to kiss toys we were not going to buy which was great and a little disgusting at the same time since you have to wonder how much kid slobber is on all the stuff in there) and we left having spent only the money we planned to for the Muppet plus a $4 Ugly Doll windup toy that we liked and a lollipop that she didn't even eat. We got off easy. And she had such a good time that I would do it again and again to hear her squeals of laughter as she ran from one exciting thing to the next.

And the beautiful park on our way home.