Law Students

Shopping, continued, with shoes

By Anonymous

Thanks for the comments and recommendations! In light of your wise counsel, and reviews from online retailers, I have decided to fall out of love with the beautiful bassinet and make the stroller my "pricey" item. As many of you pointed out, we'll use it longer and I think if anything is going to be high quality, it should be the piece of gear that will be pushed and maneuvered, rather than the one that just sits in our room. I mean they used to just stick babies in a nice padded drawer to sleep in right?

Since JP and my drawers are full of old swimming t-shirts we can't seem to part with, I think we're going with the Arm's Reach Mini Co-sleeper. I like the concept, like that we can have it attached to the bed or farther away as the baby (and we) may prefer, and really like we can use it for much longer than the bassinet. It's also $260 cheaper, and that's real money. Money that can be spent on diapers, fancy stroller accessories, and/or the gorgeous cognac leather boots I spent 30 minutes viewing from different angles on dsw.com this morning.

(Actually, I already ordered the boots. I got my third progesterone shot this morning and my thigh really hurts and I seriously hate being pregnant and I really miss my sex life and I billed 200 hours in January and it's my birthday in a few weeks and this is my first bonus- shouldn't I get to buy one special thing for me? I'm sure my little girl will love them and be so glad her mommy has them in her closet.)

But back to the baby. For the stroller, I'm 98% sold on the Bob. In small part because I like referring to it as "the Bob," but also because of the amazing number of 5-star reviews it has on every baby review website. But we're not in any rush, so I can continue to shop around and wait for the perfect deal.

My inbox is filled with shipping notices from my online shopping. I'm taking my doctor's orders to not go out and do a bunch of shopping very seriously. And actually, by foregoing the beautiful bassinet (and in my mind, it will always be referred to as such), I can buy a changing table for the downstairs and a few stroller accessories and other not-strictly-needed items, and still stay under budget. So that's good, though it would have been fun to let go and buy something because it was pretty rather than practical. Sort of like it would be fun to buy these shoes. Or these. But I am practical and those are ridiculously expensive, even if they are beautiful and belong in my closet.

Now back to the baby, again. I bought a bunch of baby hangers and a storage bin at Target over the weekend and have slowly begun the process of putting away Landon's nursery decor and getting out some of his old baby clothes. It's bittersweet- I don't miss infant Landon, but in going through those tiny clothes I'm sad and a little bitter about how certain events in those first six months robbed me of any desire to look back on them. Going through his baby outfits brings back a lot of what I avoid remembering, but it's also been helping me remember what a darn cute little guy he was.

Both of those were taken in the midst of some really bad stuff, but look how happy he is! For as much as I fear the sleepless nights, the disruption to our relatively easy schedule, and the logistical craziness of doing anything with two kids, I'm really looking forward to experiencing aspects of the baby phase again. I'm sure it'll still be hard, but it will be a different kind of hard, and at least this time around I know that JP and I can survive anything and still end up smiling, at least at some point. And I'll have some really fun new gear, and a beautiful new pair of boots, along for the ride.

Full post as published by Lag Liv on February 02, 2010 (boomark / email).