Registry Gauntlet

Well, we made it. We have . . . drum roll, please . . . registered! And we still have all our appendages and some modicum of emotional health left (not much, but some). What doesn’t kill you, or your marriage for that matter, only makes you stronger, right? Let’s hope so.

It all began innocently enough, with a fun little scanner gun. Cool! We get to point and shoot stuff! We proceeded to the first “color-coded” section –infant care, neat! -- and then we saw “THE WALL.” The wall of floor-to-ceiling bottles. Uh oh, I didn’t research this.

And Jon’s looking at me, holding the scanner in his hot-little hand, saying “what should I shoot?” Uhm, I have not the faintest clue. And I see Jon’s confidence in my ability to shepherd us through this registering process plummet. I quickly check the Babies R’ Us “recommendations of lots of stuff you should register for and if you don’t you are a bad parent and your children will be monsters” sheet. Hmm, 8-12 bottles -- doesn’t say what kind or size. Crud. Well, let’s register for a starter set of “these” bottles (not saying what kind, I make no money off endorsements) – I remember a lady at work saying that her baby had chronic ear infections and colic until she switched to this brand. That’s a representative sample and adequate market research, right? Sure, we’ll go with it. Hmm, do you need to register for extra nipples for these things? No idea, so we better just in case. You can never have too many nipples, right?

At this point I send Jon off to get a cart to put our coats and my printouts and books in (I came prepared to choose car seats, monitors, gates, etc. but not bottles), since we’re beginning to realize that we could quite possibly be in this store “registering” until I go into labor.

After bottles comes monitors – easy peasy, I’ve got research! Then safety equipment – uh oh. Do we need toilet seat locks? Hmm. Then bathtubs – no idea, though we see later on the Babies R’ Us website that the one we registered for has been rated only 2 stars by parents so we change to a better one. Don’t get me started on what we’ll call “babygate” – oh the humanity (we had research on safety gates and it still took forever!). By this point we had been in the store an hour and a half. But we’re still in the FIRST section!! And there was a decided, shall we say, “lack of communication” between Jon and I (swear words don’t count as communication, no matter how many times you say them).

Plus, I had managed to get a charley horse in my foot about half an hour in that would not go away. We’re looking at Boppies and I’m walking up and down the aisle without my shoe on, then jumping up and down, then sitting down rubbing my foot, then putting my shoe back on, and nothing is helping. Do we need bottle warmers and sterilizers? Jon says no, my foot hurts, and I don’t care. We skip bibs too, since we were more apt to strangle each other with the bibs than decide on ones to register for. Our one consolation – two other couples are in the same section registering and they look just as miserable as us.

Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel – we turn the corner to a new section. The car seat section. Yippee!! We know what we want here already – shoot it honey, shoot it! Then strollers – we picked that out already too! Bang bang! We’re on a roll! Smiles are on our faces again! Pack n’ play! Highchair (we had fun testing these out)! Bouncy seat! Researched, researched, researched -- scan, scan, scan! We’re on the move to the other side of the store, and it feels good. And we can remember again why we actually liked each other enough to procreate together, so everything is on the upswing.

Minor debate on sheets, mostly because we’re hungry and tired and our feet hurt. That brings the mood down some but it’s still better than the “infant care” hell that we’ve gone through. Then a discussion on blankets -- “What do you mean I can’t scan them all, Jon?!?” – and a perusal of the activity gyms and toys. We decide to register for one activity gym and no other toys. We figure people will give us a bunch of toys anyway, and judging from my nephews’ and nieces’ toy collections there will come a time when the last thing we want to see is a toy, so why register for them. :)

Then we’re turning in our “gun” and cruising for the exit. We’re outta here suckers – the other two couples are still back in highchairs and have no research, haha! At dinner we start plotting ways to take down Babies R’ Us. After our baby shower of course – we wouldn’t want people to not be able to get us the stuff we just spent all that time registering for after all. We made it though – we’re registered! Feel free to lavish us, er I mean lavish the baby, with gifts now. :)