-and leave rational thought at home
There are few, if any, positive experiences as disruptive as having a child. It’s chaotic, turbulent, maddening and beautiful all at the same time. Everyone knows that it’s about nine months from conception to birth, but the reality is that new parents only have about six months to prepare. That’s because the first month is filled with not even being aware of the pregnancy. The second is filled with not believing the pregnancy is real - longer for fathers. The third is taken up by trying to determine what supplies will be provided by compassionate relatives who know what is about to happen to your nice, quiet lives. It’s around the fourth month that it really hits you and you make the trip to the baby supply store. The baby supply store is great. They have everything you’ll need for your child right up until he or she is eligible for Social Security. They sell everything except babies, and, take my word for it, the store employees have heard that joke before and don’t find it even slightly amusing.
The first person you encounter upon entering the baby store, which I will call the “BS” from now on, is the person who wants you to sign up for the BS registry. It works just like a wedding registry in that future parents go through the store with a little scanning machine or a catalog and make up a list of items that they want to have, but are so overpriced that they would never buy for themselves. They also throw in a few cheap items they don’t really want so they don’t seem greedy. This list is supposed to used by friends and relatives who will be attending the baby shower (which, ironically, can also be shortened to BS), so that they can put as little thought and creativity into their gift purchase as possible. You can enter any BS right now and see couples going through this procedure. The mother will be looking at every item in the store. The father will be holding the little scanning machine. The scanning machine is technology, and this is how they get the fathers to participate. Someday, some brilliant person will combine the BS store with an electronics store and a sporting goods store and that day the tide will turn. Until then, the scanning machine, much like the TV remote, is all we’ve got.
My wife and I did the whole BS registry thing for our first child together. Most people don’t do it for the children after that, since by then they can’t fit any more junk in the house anyway. I was a little concerned about even walking into a store with the word “Baby” in its name, but I’m truly glad I did. They have cool stuff in there. You heard me right. Cool stuff. OK, they do have diapers and little tiny shoes that only fit babies too small to stand and all the toys that you will eventually find embedded in the bottom of your bare foot at 2:00 AM, but they have cool stuff too. Baby tech. If you look next to the baby monitors, which use technology from the 1970’s and work like a static riddled, one way cordless phone with a volume switch, you’ll find the baby surveillance systems. Oh yes, surveillance systems! These things have miniature color cameras with microphones and VCR controls. Some can be controlled by a computer. I think I saw one with Dolby Digital sound. They zoom, they pan. Hook it up to your big screen TV and invite the neighbors over to watch the baby sleep! Hook it up to a DVD burner and make DVDs of the baby sleeping! Use the picture-in-picture function on the TV to keep one eye on the sleeping baby and one eye on the game. Yes, the BS has come through for us in the field of baby monitoring.
Now, you need a safe place for your baby to sleep, and that’s where the crib comes in. Those of you who have never had a baby in your house need to be aware that the word cribs actually stands for Caged Ridiculous Individual who’s Barely Sleeping. Once you have your child asleep inside the crib, you must maintain complete silence in and around the crib location. This is CRUCIAL. Some parents have been known to attempt to quiet their entire neighborhood at naptime. So how can you check on your baby, who’s barely sleeping inside a cage on wheels? You need a baby monitoring system. See how it all fits together?
You need to make your home safe for a baby also, because eventually they do begin to get around. The BS has you covered. You could buy cabinet locks that are really large size zip ties that go around the cabinet handles so kids can’t open them, or you could do what I did. I bought magnetized, hidden locks for each cabinet and drawer in our kitchen. They’re great. No one even knows the cabinets are locked until they try to open one. I just sit back and laugh to myself while people furiously pull on the doors thinking they’re stuck or broken. Ha ha. Then I just walk up to the cabinet with the little magnet “key” in my hand and magically open it right up and give them that “Aren’t you a completely helpless human being” look. Well, that’s how it worked in my mind while I was throwing handfuls of these locks from hell into the BS shopping cart. The lock part goes on the inside of the door so no one can see it. The problem is, that also means no one (including me) knows exactly where it is. You are supposed to place the magnet key on the outside of the door directly opposite the lock part and it opens right up. The reality is, you squat in front of the cabinet with your ear to the door like a safecracker, moving the key all over the surface of the door hoping desperately to hear the little click that means it’s unlocked. What really happens is that as soon as I hear that little click, I move to get out of the way of the door so I can open it, slide the key two microns off the sweet spot and hear another little click that tells me it’s locked again. Sometimes I go through this for hours. I installed these locks. I will not be beaten.
“click”
Try to open
“click”
You miserable, rotten ….
“click”
Slowly move, reach the handle, pull …
“click”
Aarrrgggg!
At that point, I throw the magnet key across the room and, using both hands, grab the handle and violently shake the door until it flies open. Then I look in the cabinet and fail to find what I was looking for, close the door and hope the kids didn’t learn how to open it by watching me.
The BS also sells a dizzying array of gates that you are supposed to use to protect the children from gaining access to dangerous rooms and stairs. Children quickly learn how to climb over or under these “restraints” or, failing that, just bulldoze them out of their way. Adults will find these tiny gates completely incapacitating. There will be injuries. One of the most inhumane things you can do to a law abiding and currently sane adult is to put gates and locks all over the house. This is why parents look the way they do.
Safety is not just for the home, though, and you can also find hundreds and hundreds of car seats at the BS. They all do one thing well, which is to prevent you from going anywhere quickly. The other thing most of them do well is catch baby spit up, thereby saving your precious upholstery. You can spend many hundreds of dollars on a baby car seat depending on which model you choose. There are big ones, small ones, ones that use the car’s seat belt, ones that use a locking system so convoluted that only the baby can work it, pretty ones, ugly ones and at least one that will look like you stole it from an unlocked Space Shuttle. These are a necessity, though; so whichever one you choose, install it right and use it.
Now, whenever you get to wherever you were going, you’ll need additional baby storage and transportation products. You need a stroller. Yes, you do. Babies are cute and everyone wants to hold them, but only for 1.47 minutes at a time (on average). When not being held, the baby can be strapped securely into a stroller with lots of storage space and at least 4 wheels, more if you can afford it, less if you want to look goofy. The truth is, you’ll probably end up looking goofy at least once every time you use the stroller no matter which kind you choose. Strollers fold up, usually before you’re ready. If your model has wheels that swivel, they will lock up when you are running full speed in the rain through the parking lot looking for your car, and your inertia will send you tumbling into a Range Rover with a car alarm and a big dog inside.
But enough about me.
The chances are good that if you enter a store with it, you will get the stroller stuck in between two racks of clothes because you figure that the people who set up these stores take average stroller width into account, but they don’t. In my experience, any time the baby in the stroller can reach anything in the store, that item will be expensive and fragile, or the baby will have sticky/messy hands. It doesn’t even matter how clean you think the baby should be. You could take a child straight out of a bathtub and into a Sears store and the child would leave a trail of sticky hand marks on lots of tools, clothing and sporting goods you have no intention of buying. I’m pretty sure babies ooze sticky stuff out of their little pores.
The other thing you’ll need is some sort of baby supply storage. You can choose anything from a tiny little bag to a backpack to a suitcase sized portable supply cabinet with a built-in changing table. I like the backpack type because it looks like a backpack and not a bag full of diapers, wipes and 4 complete changes of clothes even though that’s what it contains. The downside of this is that since it looks like a backpack, some knucklehead may want to swipe it. I leave mine out in the open hoping someone will steal it, thinking it holds a laptop computer or bundles of cash. I picture the dummy gathering all his thief friends together in their hideout to split the booty and getting laughed out of the gang for stealing a diaper bag.
I suppose I need a hobby.
One of the most amazing things about getting ready for your first baby is that it is entirely possible to spend more money on supplies and gadgets and equipment for the baby than you paid for the house you’ll keep them in. It’s fun, though. It’s exciting to anticipate parenthood. It gives you something to do for four or five months. The fine associates at the BS know this and revel in it. They know that people enjoy buying stuff for a couple starting a family. That’s why the BS registry is so great. Plus, you get to use the scanner.