The handprint crisis

With each of my boys I have gotten this cute little hand/footprint combo to save and forever treasure. With my first I still lived in Utah and received a gift certificate to the cutest boutique to have it done.  By this last child we lived in Texas and I searched high and low for a place to do the same thing and finally found a place that could do it. I loaded my 3 children (including my newborn) into the car and traveled across town to this place (to remain unnamed).  I find it so hard to leave the house a few weeks after having a baby with all three children but felt this was worth the effort.  I got there, did the hand and foot prints with a screaming baby, only to find out that I would have to return and paint it and they couldn’t put his name on it… What?!! But this was that important to me so I agreed, returned a few weeks later to paint by myself and only to find out I would have to return again to pick this up.  

Weeks went by and I heard nothing and then I started working again and kinda forgot about it.  I finally remembered and called back to see what the status was.  I was informed it would be ready for pickup in 1 week.  A few weeks went by since it was so far away and I didn’t feel like I could make the trek up there and I finally called again to ensure they were open and to see if I could come pick it up.  The lady that answered put me on hold, came back and informed me that they had thrown it away.  Wait, excuse me?  She told me they had new management who had cleaned house, removed all the current projects and was starting fresh.  I asked to talked to a manager who told me that they would refund my money and couldn’t seem to understand why I was upset.  Are you kidding me? You just threw away a momento that I could never replace because my newborn baby was now almost 6 months and his hands and feet were bigger.  To make things worse then no longer did the foot/handprint combo so redoing it wasn’t an option.  What person just throws away a babies handprints??? 

In desperation I called the cute boutique, A Child’s Touch, that originally did my firsts and she was willing to send everything to Texas to help me get this done for my 3rd.  So even though it’s almost a year later than the other two I will still have a memory of those sweet baby hands and feet and a good story to remember why his are so much bigger (although I think he might just be way bigger anyway).  And they are perfect and one of my favorite things to have and I even got one with all three children hands.