Stuff
Over the weekend, Christopher and I gave some of our shower gift certificates a work out.
Sidebar: Dear Everyone Who Came To Our Baby Shower, thank you thank you thank you. Thank for laughing and hugging and drinking and making me feel like a person instead of a Weeble-Wooble. Thank you for giving my husband a night off from worrying about me. Thank you for the wonderful, thoughtful and necessary gifts so when my kid is hot in the middle of the night, I have a baby thermometer; so when we leave the house he’s appropriately dressed against the weather (and also very stylish. This’ll be a stylin’ kid, ‘cause I have some stylin’ friends. I gotta get on the shopping myself so the kid doesn’t show me up); so we can try the eco-friendly diapers but also the non-leaking back-up in case reality doesn’t measure up with our idealism; so he has places to sit and sleep and swing and play; so he has things to chew on; so he has things to read; so his dad and I have things to drink; so I have a day at the spa and fancy sushi to remember myself for a little while; so when we shop for the five thousand little things that we know we’ll need, we can whip out a gift certificate instead of a credit card; thank you, thank you, thank you.
—So we’re in Babies’r’us, and LORD ALMIGHTY, THAT STORE. Never again. It made me think of a commercial a few years back where the little old lady walks into the huge Meijer store, looks around and then walks out. An Oh So Helpful Meijer employee follows her to the parking lot and says, “Ma’am, is everything okay?” and she looks very defeated and says, “It’s just too overwhelming.” THAT’S Babies'r’us. Too big, too intimidating, ESPECIALLY when you’re nine months pregnant and super vulnerable and don’t know how many burp cloths you need in order to really be “ready.” This is why my mother taught me to shop with a LIST: ‘cause a store like this is enough to make a girl go into labor.
CHRISTOPHER: So what do we need?
ME: A Pronto, a Bundle Me and a Boppy.
CHRISTOPHER: ???????????
ME: What?
CHRISTOPHER: What did you just say?
ME: I said, ‘a Pronto, a Bundle Me and a Boppy.’
CHRISTOPHER: What language is that exactly?
ME: Baby. Now I speak baby.
For the past few months, people have been telling me the Five Products I Can’t Live Without. Problem is, everyone’s Top Five is encoded in this special secret language that I could only crack with diligent googling and, more to the point, each list was totally DIFFERENT, resulting in more like FIFTY top products instead of five which A. Won’t fit in our space and B. Who’s got that kind of cash? Not us—we’ve got to pay for college in eighteen years (Hi, Obama! We should talk).
1) Crib 2) Dreft 3) Pump 4) Bugaboo 5) Aquaphor
1) Bjorn 2) Boppy 3) Costco card 4) Gymini 5) Wipe Warmer
1) Co-sleeper 2) Carseat 3) Sling 4) Dr. Brown’s 5) Lounger
1) Sophie the Giraffe 2) Sleep Sack (sometimes SACK is spelled SACQUE. Which, I mean, I don’t even know what to say about that) 3) waterproof mattress pad 4) Swing 5) Booby Tubes (!!!!)
1) Pump 2) Food processor 3) Seventh Generation 4) Binkie 5) Pee-Pee-Tee-Pee (??)
Can you picture me? On the couch, watching bad cable and googling PEE-PEE-TEE-PEE. And SLURP’N’BURP. And BOPPY LUXE and MIRACLE MIDDLE and SNAP’N’GO and SACQQQQUUUUUUE, trying to figure out A. What they are and B. Do I need them? Are they one of the oh-so-important products I won’t be able to live without?
The fact is, there’s no way I’ll be able to know ‘til this kid shows up. And then, I wager, he’ll fill me in pretty damn quick.
What I CAN speak to, at this stage in the game, is the Top Five Products I Couldn’t Have Lived Without During This Pregnancy (just in case, Internet, you get knocked up. Which would be a KILLER sci-fi movie, right? “What if the internet got pregnant?” starring Lawrence Fishbourne, of course).
Top Five Products I Couldn’t Have Lived Without During This Pregnancy
While the obvious answer here is Christopher—he who puts up with my whining, who brings me flowers and Gatorade, who carries heavy things, who went out into the cold night to get me baked potatoes from Wendy’s, who installs new closets and paints the baby’s room and mops the floor so the house will be ready, who calls me all day long from work to see if I’m having a baby RIGHT NOW, AS WE SPEAK, who likes onesies off etsy with robots on them, who helps me get my boots off when I can’t bend over, who takes me for fondue when I’m so busy being capital P pregnant that I forget that I’m a person and who says he honestly doesn’t care that I’ve worn the same outfit for the past four months—but he’s not a product. Not for sale. Not redeemable with any gift certificate, thank you, so we’ll move on.
1. Insurance (Are you still here, Obama?). For me, peace of mind during this pregnancy was an absolute necessity, and the fact that every woman and child doesn’t have that makes me want to rip out my eyeballs.
2. Vernors. For the first trimester.
3. Uggs. I know—the attractiveness of these boots are much debated, and while normally I place extreme value on How Cute Are My Shoes, probably to a fault, at this point I could care less. Uggs are warm and big and my feet grew and I love them.
4. Extra Pillow. For all sorts of things.
5. Tums. The berry-flavored Smoothie ones in the big blue bottle. I eat them like candy because heartburn is a bitch. At the Baby Class we took, there was no less than five women with that same bottle sitting in front of them because all of us have acid pouring down the backs of our throats.
THAT SAID, I'm doing this thing where I try and remember that I’m an actual person instead of just a (VERY) pregnant lady (like, THIS KID MIGHT COME BEFORE I GET TO THE END OF THIS SENTENCE, PEOPLE), therefore I’ll also offer up the Top Five Products I Couldn’t Live Without, Period. Because, so I'm told, I WILL cease to be an actual person until I figure out the breast-feeding thing and my kid sleeps for longer than two hours and my house smells like something besides poop.
Top Five Products I Couldn’t Live Without, Period.
(see above addendum re: Christopher)
1. Our dog. Yes, I know, he is not a product, but how we FOUND him sort of is: you go to petfiner.com, plug in what you’re looking for (dog? Cat? Bird? Horse? Baby? Older animal? A certain breed?) and your zip code, and they bring up every adoptable animal in a hundred mile radius, along with photos and descriptions, etc. We had a wonderful experience both through this site and the shelter we were consequently hooked up with, and I can’t recommend it enough.
2. Our house. I’ve had the Own Your Home vrs. Rent debate with many people (“Build equity! Live free! No ties! Great market/shitty market! Take off and move to Bali anytime!”) and the fact is, I spent almost fifteen years living in a new place every year (if not every six months). I lived in Florence for a year, in Prague for a year, I’ve traveled across the country for months at a time and, while I’m totally open to doing all that again at some point, right now I really love the idea of having a little corner that’s all mine. That I’m building something solid for my kid. This is where Lee Diamond at Big Shoulders Realty comes in, because working with him to find our home was fantastic (I wrote about it here already) and, furthermore, we still talk with him all the time because A. he’s super-cool but also B. he’s giving all his clients all sorts of advice right now because of the current market, and what we should be doing to protect ourselves, and where are the best rates, etc. etc. If you’re considering buying—or want more information on how you can prepare yourself now to buy later—this is your guy. You should also check out his band, Replica Republica. They rock.
3. My computer.
4. Books. Total no-brainer.
5. 2nd Story. This is my job, my creative outlet, my community and an f’ing good time all rolled into one. It also imposes all sorts of deadlines to keep me working, one of which I am currently blowing by writing this here list so now I will stop.
(a friend asked why coffee and Maker’s Mark weren’t on this list. The answer: I’VE FORGOTTEN WHAT THEY TASTE LIKE)
