For weeks, my daughter and I have said we were going to inventory the stuff she already has for the arrival of the Littlest Smith. She got some serious hand me downs from friends and family, like a crib, a bassinet, high chair, and what not. She's gone through the thrift store a couple times, to find things that still have some good use left in them. And she and I, as a whole, have showed entirely no restraint shopping for baby clothes. So looking at it as a whole, we thought we were pretty well stocked up.
Then I came over to her house, made a list of what she has, and compared it to what the internet says you need. In a flash, we went from feeling like we had everything to feeling like there was a long way to go. We made a second list, of what we have yet to acquire before Smith Jr arrives, and we set out to Target, to learn how this whole baby registry thing works nowadays.
The scanners Target hands out now are really just iPods in red rubber cases, with a scanner camera attached. You use your app login (I used mine so she doesn't get spammed), and get to it. It was easy in the beginning. We went down each row in order in the store, making sure to grab everything with bees and anchors, her two favorite motifs these days. By the time we were four aisles in, looking at the ludicrous selection of bottles and feeding systems, we started getting overwhelmed and our choices were less informed.
The instructions say to scan twice as many items as people you have invited to the baby shower, so people have plenty to choose from. I think we tripled up compared to how many people we expect to invite. That's okay. If not everything gets purchased, Little Smith will still be just fine. They have the main things they need: clothes to keep them warm and dry, a place to sleep, a food source, and most importantly, parents who already love them unconditionally. Whether they get the spoons with color-changing silicone tips that alert when food is too hot won't diminish that one bit.
Once we have had a chance to recover from an exhausting stroll through Target, we will make a couple other registries, at other big stores like Amazon and Walmart, so we provide equal opportunity for her friends and family to shop where they are comfortable. She also wants me to find the right way to encourage her shower guests to shop second hand, in order to be less wasteful. I'll be curious to see which of her friends does that, and what they find.
The registry app gave us a countdown timer in days until her due date. Seeing just how few there are to go gave me a bit of a panic attack. I'm super excited, but also feeling the need to nest, even though it's not my house that has to be ready right away. I gotta get busy.
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