Leave the great indoorsnotes on the journey

In a continuing effort to immortalize every moment of my transition from non-parent to dad, this is the first in a series of posts about the exploration of this brand new world — just so I won’t forget. I apologize if this is boring to you, but there’s a lot to read on the Internet, so I think you should be ok.

Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way… We visited Babies R Us for the first time this weekend. My parents are currently visiting from South Africa, and they wanted to buy our early-second-trimester baby a gift. Who are we to say “No” to such an offer? So off we went, with a lot of mental preparation on my part — because I was fully briefed on how overwhelming your first visit can be (as one friend put it, “I never knew how many things there are just for babies to sit in!”).

As we arrived, I realized again that having a baby comes with many wonderful perks. This probably isn’t a big deal, but for me, finding out that we can park right in front of the store was the perfect way to diffuse any fears I may have had. “Stork parking.” Clever.

So in we went.  I expected the store to be big, but let’s face it, once you’ve been in Costco, nothing else is big anymore. So that wasn’t an issue. What really blew my mind is how high-tech everything has become. Not that I really have anything to compare it with, but I am just fascinated by the design ingenuity that goes into some of these baby products – especially when it comes to the whole sit/sleep/play/transport class of baby activities.

We left with a great gift from Grandpa and Grandma-to-be — a  Graco Pack ‘n Play, which is basically a whole entertainment complex in a box, if you’re not familiar with this kind of thing.  Oh, also — apparently Graco is a great baby brand. Who knew? And their web site is not www.graco.com, it’s www.gracobaby.com. You only make that mistake once. Although, that would be an interesting merger…

Anyway, back to the transportable baby house. It is an ingenious piece of design. It has a little playpen, a bed, a changing table, some soothing sounds to help the baby sleep, a canopy thingy, and WHEELS, for crying out loud. It also has a bassinet, but I have no idea what that is, so I don’t want to talk about that feature until I figure it out. I was so disappointed that we don’t have anything to put in there yet. So for now it’s just sitting in a box, waiting patiently for its new occupant.

A week from today we have our next ultrasound where we will hopefully find out what the baby’s gender is. This will, I’m sure, lead to renewed urgency to get some form of baby room ready in our condo. I already lost the first battle (do we really need to get rid of the computer desk in there? It took forever to assemble!!), and I look forward to losing many more as we create this space. Because let’s face it, Jess is much better at this stuff than I am, and all I should really be allowed to do is paint.