We made an impromptu family voyage downtown this morning so my husband could do some shopping for his upcoming trip to NY for his best friend�s birthday. AJ was a little fractious at first, as my husband browsed through assorted old books on the Civil War at the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop. AJ and I sat in some old wooden school chairs and played �I Spy� using all the old presidential portraits and the scores of busts of Lincoln (we spied a lot of horsies). Having had the chance to stare at so many Lincoln portraits, I have come to concur with the general consensus that Kerry resembles him.

Having exhausted the entertainment value of dusty books, we moved on to shopping. While my husband headed out to look for clothes for his trip, AJ and I stopped into Galt Toys and went a little crazy. AJ added about 50 things to his hypothetical birthday list before he found a race-car set to play with. The set was perfect for him, because instead of plugging it in and turning it on, you wound the cars by rubbing them back and forth on the track then let them go, sending them through a whole series of loops and sailing across the finish line. Even I was having fun with it. After a while a little girl about 6 months old pulled up in her stroller, fascinated. Every time AJ would run a car through the loop, she would laugh. AJ loved his audience and kept trying to make the cars do crazy things in order to keep the baby giggling.

After some difficulty we extracted AJ from the toy store and set off for Barney�s. What we hadn�t realized is that AJ had thought we were going to BARNEY�S � as in the home of the large and annoying purple dinosaur. Of course he did. Why wouldn�t he? Still, he was extremely upset when he saw the doorman. After calming him down with a glass of juice, I pondered who would actually pay $1200 for a tote bag, while my husband bought a tie for next week�s birthday shindig. Our purchases complete, we headed home.

Unfortunately AJ is exhausted but refuses to sleep. I can hear him yelling, �I hear you!� from his room. My minutes are numbered. I�d better go.

0 people said it like they meant it