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.

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.

Just Browsing

While it’s too early to “officially” register, Tiffany and I have been checking out prices of various items at Target and Babies R’ Us to see if there’s difference and what should be registered for where. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the market for baby supplies has quadrupled in the last 20 years and that estimate is probably conservative. I can’t believe some of the stuff they’re trying to pass off as essential.

Anyway, there are some things that are necessary: crib, stroller, car seat, diaper bag etc... You can’t avoid these things, but you would think one could limit the spending. Last week Tiffany called me from Babies R’ Us and said she found a nice stroller and that it was made by Chico . It’s a stroller and also a car seat, a combo, a travel system as they call it. Many makes offer travel systems, Graco, even Eddie Baur, and I’m all for it. One less purchase,  we just have to buy an extra base so we have one for each car. 

However, when I heard Chico I thought that sounded expensive. Sure enough it’s one of the most expensive units on the market. Likewise when we’re at the store Saturday I saw a play yard that looked pretty good, that could also double as a bassinet for a week or two, only guess what? Chico makes one of those too and it’s 70 bucks or roughly 50% more than the one i thought looked good from Graco.

Now I’m not saying we need to buy things on the cheap, not at all, but who is the $300 stroller really for? The baby who doesn’t even know what a stroller is or mom or dad? I’m not saying I’m even against buying it, let’s just be honest and not buy these things under the assumption that it’s better for our child when in reality we could probably get one used and the baby would never know the difference.

Another debate that is raging right now is the “lifetime crib” vs. a traditional crib. And when I say raging debate, I mean neither of us can decide for certain which might be better. The lifetime crib, for those uninitiated folks, turns from a crib, to a toddler bed, to a full-size bed, so in theory, it could be the only bed frame you buy the child its’ entire life. Obviously, I like the idea of that. But I have some suspicions on whether or not that will be the case.

Already, I’m hearing things like, “Our guest room bed is a full so if nothing else, it could become the frame for that if we buy a cute kids bed later.” Again, sounds good in theory until the cute kid’s bed becomes embarrassing for the teenager to use. Do you switch back to the lifetime crib at that point and if so, what happens to the cute kids bed. I wouldn’t say I’m stressing about all this, I just find it interesting and wondering if they only have this lifetime crib as an option so they can squeeze another 40-60 bucks out of would-be parents, meanwhile it ends up in the trash heap or garage sale like everything else. I’m sure these are all issues that we’ll have to address at a later time. 

 I won’t even get into the “great glider debate”, we’ll save that for another post. Next doctor appointment in two days.