Staying in the cart didn't last long, though, because Evie wanted to try out every single chair in the desk chairs section and then felt that it was important to be involved in the selection of a filing cabinet, which we didn't get. She was focused and thorough in her testing of the Ikea goods.
No bed was left untested either and a minor meltdown ensued when I finally insisted that she get back into the cart so that we could actually get to the section we came to visit. As usual, our trip to Ikea was filled with diversions and we ended up with way more stuff than we intended on getting. A bed, though, we made it home without (barely...Evie really wanted a 'big girl' bed, but we are planning to continue to enjoy her being trapped in her crib for as long as possible).
Oh the excitement that is the warehouse! By this point in the trip, I was actually sitting on the floor, but Evie was still full of energy and astonishment. Jim was off gathering all of our purchases. By the time you get to the warehouse part of Ikea, everyone has that 'been in Ikea for three hours and have to get out of here as soon as possible' look in their eyes.
But we all know that you can't just buy your stuff and leave Ikea. Oh no, there is always that ONE item that has to be collected at a different point and on a Saturday morning there are always about six million people ahead of you waiting for their one special collection item, too. So Evie and I ditched Jim and went to the merry-go-round outside. First she drove a pink Barbie car (she takes her driving very seriously):
Then she drove a London bus:
I am not very good with things that go around and around (motion sickness has plagued me late in life), so the merry-go-round only managed to kill about five minutes of the thirty or forty it took to get our special collection. Luckily there was a playground outside of Ikea, too, so we spent the rest of our extra time there. When Jim finally found us with all of our stuff, I didn't think we were going to be able to fit it all into our hatchback, but, using his master packing skills he made it work.
The drive home was a happy one (happy to be out of Ikea, happy to be going home, happy to be all together, happy that Jim can drive in London and we can do things like go to Ikea...but we definitely decided that our next driving outing is going to be OUTSIDE of London into the country or something).
And for Evie, it was nap time:
