Registration Day

Yesterday we ventured out to Babies R’ Us to start our registry. I say start because it appears that a baby registry is an ever changing organism, something that can never be truly defined or completed. I’d say we spent well over two hours in the store and we still have plenty of fine tuning to do.. and of course by “we”, I mean Tiffany.

We began at the desk just inside the doors under the huge sign that read “Baby Registry” (As if you could register for anything else at Babies R’ Us). It would be interesting to find out how much of their business comes from registry related items, I’m guessing well over 50 percent. Once seated, we were walked through the process along with three other couples to save time. That was the first and only instance of saving time on this day.

Armed with a book of recommendations and our gun we headed out first to the far northwest corner of the store. The gun had a familiar feel, much like the one I had used almost six years ago at Target and Bed Bath and Beyond to complete our wedding registry. The scans were quick and easy accompanied by a satisfying beep each time, I was happy.

We started with receiving blankets and sheets....which are necessary of course, but not that interesting to look at or select. This is when Tiffany started bouncing around aisle to aisle. Weeks and hours of preparation, lists made and she rarely consulted anything as we made our way around the store. The bigger ticket items like your stroller, jumper and high chair were of course preselected and took little or no time and seemed to be the areas where the preparation paid off.

We got hung up on bedding for the crib and by association, overall “look of the nursery.” Now I’m not against pink, far from it, but I am not painting a room pink. Can our daughter have pink things? Sure, a pink room is not one of them so I did have some interest in the bedding and overall look. The first design that Tiffany had picked I thought was awful. Out of the 30 choices they had for boys and girls her choice would have ranked 30th for me. 

We eventually chose a pattern with a little pink, but also plenty of red with a ladybug theme, a good compromise.  Of course it took about 20 minutes to arrive at that decision. It was the first of many instances of feeling sort of overwhelmed.

For example, there were about nine types of wipes, nine. There were wipes for sensitive skin , dry skin, wipes with aloe etc...etc...I can’t even remember what we ended up with and I won’t even get into the diapers which I thought were organized pretty poorly. Here’s a crazy idea, put the same sizes together or at least have them broken up by size within the same brand. By the time we got around to bottles and nipples and other odds and ends, we were pretty much wiped so that’s where a lot of the fine tuning will come in on the computer.

When we finished...for the day.. we returned to where we started where there were four couples just starting like we were just a couple hours before. They took our gun and plugged it into the computer and we left with a bag full of coupons and samples for the recently registered, a thank you of sorts for bringing them hundreds of dollars of business. So our days with the gun are probably over, but ahead lies weeks and weeks of logging on and updating the list.

Active Duty

Our little one is becoming quite the active body (inside Tiffany’s body). Tiffany feels her all the time now, but I’m not that lucky. I’ll put my hand on her stomach and I do feel something, it’s just not what I expected. 

To be honest I’m not really sure what i expected, a kick, a push of my hand, something  more than what I’ve felt so far. What I’m feeling now seems to be a grapefruit rolling around in Tiffany’s lower abdomen. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have felt that before she was pregnant and the sensation I feel is usually followed by a “Did you feel that,” from Tiffany so I’m assuming it’s our little girl doing summersaults.

Our crib and dresser/changer is in, six weeks ahead of schedule. Right now it’s sitting in the warehouse. We’re not sure where we should get it delivered or if we should pick it up. Do we deliver to the new house after we close at the end of next month? Do we deliver to Tiffany’s parents house? Do we pick it up and and bring it to our current house  because we will most likely be hiring movers anyway? For now, it’s in the warehouse. They say they only want to hold it for up to two weeks, but what are they going to do? If they sell it to someone else they would have to give us another set or a refund so I’m not concerned. 

Tiffany heads to Dallas tomorrow to visit the branch there. That will be her last trip for work, I hope. She’s driving too and it’s a 4 hour drive so I’m not thrilled about it, but at this stage in the pregnancy there shouldn’t be any problems. She’ll be back on Friday and there are talks that we will register this weekend. She’s getting pretty anxious. It looks like now we may be having an open house so if we have Chase with us, that’s not really an option but I’m sure it will happen sooner than later.

Tiffany has spent a lot of time doing research for items for the registry. To the untrained eye, like mine, maybe too much time. I think wars were started with less preparation. Anyway, I guess I’m operating under the assumption that we will almost certainly leave something off we could use and even more likely, register for 20 items we find no use for once the baby arrives.

I do think we need to have a solid stroller and car seat, those are two items that we will use every day and that need to be safe. I’m not sure there’s a huge difference from one bouncer or highchair to another, but I’m sure I’ll find out.

Don't send clothes :)

Tiffany’s mom and sisters visited this past weekend and after we all went to dinner on Friday, the ladies went shopping for the baby Saturday morning and afternoon as I mentioned below. Our baby will be well clothed for the first 3 months of her life, and possibly up to 6 months, that’s for sure. I was surprised how much they came back with, especially considering the baby is 4+ months away. Either way, whenever she arrives, she will be well clothed thanks to grandma’s generosity.

The blog posts have been less frequent lately because we are in the process of getting our house together to sell. Not the best time for sure, but we’ve found a house near Tiffany’s parents, our preferred daycare provider.) It’s very nice and even larger than what we have now, so there won’t be a need to move down the road. We’re getting what I think is a very good deal, but I’ll feel even better once we sell our current house.

I got some positive feedback the last time I delved into something a little outside the pregnancy and I’m sure some people will find this quite enlightening and it does have to do with child care.

We had a couple apply for one of our houses today. They are not married and the woman has four kids, who are disabled. The man works a lot of hours in a trade profession, but the woman stays home and takes care of the kids. Understandable, of course, they are disabled. She collects over $700 a month in Social Security for EACH child, that’s each child folks for a total over $2,600 a month. But these kids do need it, I mean they are disabled.

I’m sure by now you’re wondering what their disability is. Two have ADD and ADHD and the other two have “other learning disabilities”. Their ages are 17, 16, 13 and 11. I believe she is pregnant with a fifth child, but I didn’t ask. That makes sense since once the eldest child turns 18, that check stops arriving in the mail.

Just to recap, this woman collects over $2,600 from the government for her “disabled kids”.....there’s nothing wrong with this picture???????????

And people wonder why Social Security is going bankrupt, unless of course this is the only such case in the country....HMMMM. 

Just Browsing

Tiffany is quickly assembling her registry list but lately she has been focusing on a stroller. There seems to be a winner now, the city mini jogging stroller. It’s gotten very good reviews , is lightweight and looks to be quite durable. This is one of many review/demonstrations out there. It’s still hard for me to focus on something that won’t be needed for another 6 months, though I do like the looks of this stroller.

Tiffany is actually out right now giving it a test drive with her mom and sisters. They arrived yesterday to do some browsing for baby over at Babies R’ Us and other related stores. I got to do some more yard work, with the heat index well over 100.

We’ll see what they come back with, if anything, but I have a feeling this is the first of many such trips.

I Felt it Move

We’re home again after seeing some friends and family in the northeast, in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It was the little one’s third trip in utero and the first since we found out that we were having a girl. We did buy some baby girl clothes while on vacation and our friends Matt and Andrea got us a nice girl outfit with a Phillies theme as well as a onesy. We bought some dresses for 6-9 months old since they were on clearance now in Philadelphia, but will be nice to have in May and beyond in Texas next year. 

During the past week Tiffany has really started to feel our baby girl move around. One night at Matt and Andrea’s I actually felt it when I put my hand on her stomach during a particularly active sequence. I’m sure it will get easier for me to feel her over the next few weeks. She is most active when Tiffany is laying still because movement supposedly calms babies down in the womb.

We also saw a sonogram of Matt and Andrea’s little boy and a 3-D version of the face, amazing. We are just a few weeks from that. Their due date is about four weeks before ours so if Andrea is two weeks late and Tiffany is two weeks early, we could both have Christmas babies.

We also got to see Bob and Melissa and their two young daughters who were born about 15 months apart. They are very cute and really love Bob and it was interesting to see their different personalities. Emma and Abigail were born less than two years apart and from the same parents yet seem to be almost two completely different people. Both very sweet, but very different mannerisms. This time next year I’ll be dealing with a 7-month old baby girl with her own quirks and mannerisms. 

This weekend we will be celebrating Cameron’s first birthday (Britney and Brian’s son two doors down). It seems like last week that they were bringing him home from the hospital. It’s been fun to watch him grow over the next year and I look forward to doing the same with ours (and seeing more!).

In name news, we’re 95% percent sure on what we will be calling our daughter, but we’re stealing an idea from Matt and Andrea who are not telling anyone their son’s name until he is born. We will be doing the same. My mother was not a fan of that plan at first...her response on the phone when I told her our plan...”WHAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!” Plus, she almost seemed angry until we pointed out that we didn’t need a bunch of monogramed clothes and/or gear and that she did know it’s a girl. I will say that it’s NOT going to be Madison or Addison. We’ll see if our girl starts “answering” to our name in the next few weeks and hopefully I’ll be able to feel her move again soon.

The Name Game

Since we know we are having a baby girl, our focus has now turned to finding a name for her. Previously we had agreed on Kaitlyn for a girl, but Tiffany said a while back that she didn’t particularly care for that anymore. We had agreed on Bryce for a boy and we left it at that until we found out for sure what we were having.   

Right now the leader in the clubhouse is Addison, but I’m not really sold on it especially since it translates to “son of Adam”. (which would be fine if we were having a boy) Tiffany also likes Madison, I’m not a big fan. I think she’s focused on something that can be abbreviated. For instance, Addison would become Addy and Madison would become Maddy. 

She doesn’t like Kaitlyn now because that would be abbreviated as Katie, or not at all, and her younger sister is named Kate. So the search continues.

This weekend we did purchase the baby’s nursery furniture. A set we liked has been on sale for a while and we didn’t know how much longer it would be so we pulled the trigger on a “lifetime” crib, a dresser that can also be used as a changing table, a mattress and rails that convert the crib into a full size bed. 

The mattress we bought is pretty elaborate. I’ll save you the whole sales pitch that we were subjected to, but to sum up, this mattress can be submerged in water for hours and remain dry. It might be better than our mattress, albeit on a smaller scale. I thought it might be a little early to be buying these things, but it turns out it’s going to take up to 8 weeks for our order to arrive at the warehouse. By then, we’’l just be 3 months or so short of our due date. The first of some serious purchases is in the books 

We’ll be getting a glider at some point, I’m sure, but the next big activity will be the registry for our current nameless baby girl. Suggestions for names are always welcome in the comments section.