I'm in no way a handyman. In fact, there are about four house projects for which I'm qualified: hanging blinds, installing dimmer switches (quite the advanced project for someone of my skill level), hanging shelves, and assembling any type of furniture involving an Allen wrench. Even with this limited skill set, I can work my way around Home Depot or Lowe's and have a relatively decent idea of where to go and what I'm looking for. In my younger days, I would roam around those stores with a befuddled look, crisscrossing the store, and generally getting more and more frustrated by the minute.
These days, home improvement stores have been replaced in the befuddlement department by baby stores. Even though I'm eight weeks away from becoming a parent, I have a horrible (actually, it's not really that horrible as I don't really like the stores, but as an expectant parent society tells me I should feel horrible) feeling that I'll never quite get comfortable in the big box baby stores, which made for a somewhat frustrating evening. An evening spent clearing off the registry.
I thought clearing the registry would be a relatively easy task that would resemble a quick look the remaining items, confirming what was still needed, and quickly shoveling items into a cart as we moved briskly through the store. This expectation came to a crashing halt within minutes of entering. Nine minutes to be exact. You never know how long nine minutes is until you've watched your wife walk around an infant clothing section looking for mittens, a hat, and socks, none of which, mind you, were on the registry. Somehow my expectation of crossing things off a checklist had morphed into some sort of sick shopping expedition. Part of the issue was that when she registered she knew about as much about baby stores as I do now (she's easily at a more advanced level).
You might also be asking yourself, isn't "T minus 8 weeks" a little early to be clearing off the list? To be honest, I don't know. What I do know is that the fact that it wasn't done was causing stress in a person to be named. Since my job is basically to remove as much stress from that person to be named's life, I didn't ask any questions or put up a fight. We found the earliest night that worked and it's one less thing on the list.
Even though I'm smart enough to know my stress reduction role, I'm not going to lie, my attitude didn't start out terribly well. When Lindsay showed me a $60 theremoscan electronic ear thermometer, my response was something like this, "Did you have that when you were a kid? Are you still standing here? Then I think we can probably do without." I'm all for technology and realize there are things available that weren't thirty-plus years ago, but I drew a line at a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.
Shortly after the thermometer incident we found ourselves in the pacifier section. Like any normal person, I expected to find a few different types of pacifiers but I didn't think an item so simple would deserved its own L-shaped interior section with shelves from floor to ceiling. I was sorely mistaken. I had no idea what the differences were but thankfully we had been told, "just pick out a mix of them and the kid will figure out which one he or she likes." That's exactly the kind of randomness that could change my attitude.
Eventually we worked our way around the store though I still had to push a little bit; when shopping with Lindsay she can easily regress into dawdle mode which means she can take far longer than necessary to get around a store. I'm fine with this, I think it's somewhat therapeutic for her (though it's usually at Target), I just tend to be more fine with it when I'm not involved.
On the bright side, it's one less thing that needs to be done. We're in really good shape on the material side of things - the nursery is 95% complete (the remaining 5% being finalizing what to put on the walls) and the house stocked to handled a newborn. Over the next few weeks, we shift out attention to the classes. Let's just hope the little bugger sticks in the oven long enough for us to complete the classes. And yes, I've gently tried the argument that there are far more babies raised in the world by parents that didn't attend a class than those that did but that's one of those areas where I've decided it's not in my best interest to push. Those classes are nowhere near as ridiculous as a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.
These days, home improvement stores have been replaced in the befuddlement department by baby stores. Even though I'm eight weeks away from becoming a parent, I have a horrible (actually, it's not really that horrible as I don't really like the stores, but as an expectant parent society tells me I should feel horrible) feeling that I'll never quite get comfortable in the big box baby stores, which made for a somewhat frustrating evening. An evening spent clearing off the registry.
I thought clearing the registry would be a relatively easy task that would resemble a quick look the remaining items, confirming what was still needed, and quickly shoveling items into a cart as we moved briskly through the store. This expectation came to a crashing halt within minutes of entering. Nine minutes to be exact. You never know how long nine minutes is until you've watched your wife walk around an infant clothing section looking for mittens, a hat, and socks, none of which, mind you, were on the registry. Somehow my expectation of crossing things off a checklist had morphed into some sort of sick shopping expedition. Part of the issue was that when she registered she knew about as much about baby stores as I do now (she's easily at a more advanced level).
You might also be asking yourself, isn't "T minus 8 weeks" a little early to be clearing off the list? To be honest, I don't know. What I do know is that the fact that it wasn't done was causing stress in a person to be named. Since my job is basically to remove as much stress from that person to be named's life, I didn't ask any questions or put up a fight. We found the earliest night that worked and it's one less thing on the list.
Even though I'm smart enough to know my stress reduction role, I'm not going to lie, my attitude didn't start out terribly well. When Lindsay showed me a $60 theremoscan electronic ear thermometer, my response was something like this, "Did you have that when you were a kid? Are you still standing here? Then I think we can probably do without." I'm all for technology and realize there are things available that weren't thirty-plus years ago, but I drew a line at a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.
Shortly after the thermometer incident we found ourselves in the pacifier section. Like any normal person, I expected to find a few different types of pacifiers but I didn't think an item so simple would deserved its own L-shaped interior section with shelves from floor to ceiling. I was sorely mistaken. I had no idea what the differences were but thankfully we had been told, "just pick out a mix of them and the kid will figure out which one he or she likes." That's exactly the kind of randomness that could change my attitude.
Eventually we worked our way around the store though I still had to push a little bit; when shopping with Lindsay she can easily regress into dawdle mode which means she can take far longer than necessary to get around a store. I'm fine with this, I think it's somewhat therapeutic for her (though it's usually at Target), I just tend to be more fine with it when I'm not involved.
On the bright side, it's one less thing that needs to be done. We're in really good shape on the material side of things - the nursery is 95% complete (the remaining 5% being finalizing what to put on the walls) and the house stocked to handled a newborn. Over the next few weeks, we shift out attention to the classes. Let's just hope the little bugger sticks in the oven long enough for us to complete the classes. And yes, I've gently tried the argument that there are far more babies raised in the world by parents that didn't attend a class than those that did but that's one of those areas where I've decided it's not in my best interest to push. Those classes are nowhere near as ridiculous as a $60 thermoscan electronic ear thermometer.
$60 for a thermometer might be a little steep but DEFINITELY get several. You want one for each level of your house, and a couple of extras. Trust me. Also, note the location of said thermometers. That way when Lindsay says (with her teeth gritted together) "where is the thermometer?????" you can pull it out pronto!
ReplyDelete(I hit send too quickly. $60 thermometer = no. BUT get several of the cheaper variety. Our fave is the brand that shows a red or yellow or green "face" depending on the temperature level.
DeleteNaomi, I have a feeling we may be coming to you for words of wisdom and advice...we actually have a friend that sent us a list of items to consider (she has 3 awesome kids, kind of our litmus test for parenting) and the theme throughout was "stash stuff around the house." I'm planning a post that incorporates.
ReplyDeleteMy two cents: We survived without the classes and the kids are doing OK. Love the $60 thermoscan ear thermometer. John just used it last night himself.
ReplyDelete