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.