Registreeee

Just got back from another pointless but entertaining visit to Babies R Us. Babies R Us is located about 300 yards from where I currently sit, on my bed, typing this - thus the reason I had applied there for a job back in the early fall when we moved to this side of I-75. Unfortunately, they felt I was highly qualified for an assistant manager position (oooh, flattering!) down in Cincinnati (ooh, stupid!). And this is why I do not work at Babies R Us.

I like to wander around our mall-side neighborhood's strip mall atmosphere while drinking something cold from Starbucks. It gives me a feeling of purpose that I don't get laying around at home. And it's nice exercise. So today I wandered out to Starbucks, then to a Mazda dealership nearby for some extremely preliminary car shopping, and then out Mazda's back door through a mine-field of geese poop to Lowe's to check paint colors for our new apartment. (Side note: $30 worth of paint and a day's worth of effort have made our current apartment, a six-hundred something square foot, one bedroom living space, seem like the house we will never bother to buy. It's been a beautiful haven of serenity in a time of uncertainty and transient living, and I want to continue that vibe in our new place... with more paint) Too caffeinated (even decaf has it's perks) to go home yet, and needing to use a loo, I wandered back via Babies R Us.

Now, Babies R Us is a superstore of cheer and helpfulness; sort of a pastel Wal-Mart look with a cult-recruitment attitude. They are NICE. All the signs are done in a sort of feminine, adorable font. Things are purple and they play Sufjean Stevens on their music rotation. There are iddy-biddy clothes for the ladies and grannies to coo about, and enough big box items to challenge and entertain the dads. (I for the most part pack myself in with the men... when given the choice between a Cabbage Patch doll and a pair of Fisher Price plastic roller skates as a 5 year old, I chose the skates because I wanted to play with the switches and gears that would adjust the size. I still can't get an infant car seat off of the base, though.)

Today I had enough estrogen -perhaps I had used up all my testosterone sitting on a tractor at Lowes reading about color schemes and paint quality- to go directly back towards the nursery bedding sets. All the cutesy little crib bumpers and quilts and dust ruffles that people tend to think they need, simply because they are available. It's interesting... a friend bought a set at a steal of $80 (they run between $129 and $200+) and her son has never slept in his crib, to my knowledge. Now even the sources you're supposed to turn to for good information on safety... no names come to mind, thank you, Google for making me dumb... say that crib bumpers are unnecessary and even dangerous, quilts are strangulation hazards, and, well, they don't have any problems with dust ruffles at this point, but I supposed a predator could hide under your crib easier that way, if you want to be really paranoid. I have convinced myself that I do not want to take a part in the nursery bedding orgy and that my son or daughter is going to go through babyhood sleeping on a tightly fitted sheet in a hand-me-down luxury crib, in a well-accessorized room with at least one wall painted. And that's why I was there: to decide what color to paint that one wall would be.

See, having very little imagination and lots of expectations regarding the concept of a baby's nursery, I look to the very things I call rubbish for inspiration. Being unaware of the gender of our soon-to-be child is one x factor. The fact that baby's room will be mostly unoccupied by baby and serve as more of a transient home to guests and helpers for around 8 weeks is another thought. Animals or alphabets? Modern Ikea functionality or funky, friendly textures? Arrrrgghhh... Ikea! That's my other decorating demon. Knowing that it's just a few miles down the road makes me want to hitch-hike down for some cheap baby textile buying. Yeah. Not sure where I'm going with this, but basically when it all comes down to it, I am going to build the color scheme for this child's room from a simple, $14 fitted crib sheet.

I knew that when I walked out of Babies R Us today, but I wanted to justify the decision. So I pop online and try to get my friend Google to give me some backup. Self-doubt took over and I found myself searching the nursery bedding sets I liked on eBay. Prices were still high... high enough to bring back my cynicism. With great scorn, I turned to Google at last and searched "Baby bedding sets are crap", hoping to get an official press release from the surgeon general about how you will save your baby's life and millions of dollars by not giving in to the peer pressure. Instead, I found some dude's very entertaining blog:

http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/pregnancy/morestuff.html

After reading his entry, I can proudly say our hand-me-down crib is a KinderKraft. Well, a 13 year old KinderKraft. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, surgeon general.