Having a baby and getting married are pretty similar events in life. Both represent significant changes in your life and the life of your spouse. Both involve a good amount of the husband attempting to stay ‘out of the crossfire’. Both involve the woman wearing a silly gown at the end. And in both occasions, you pretty much get bought most of what you need to get started (and a good amount you probably don’t need).
It’s that last bit I want to focus on. Both occasions mean lots of free stuff, which is awesome, to be sure. Not only are people pretty expected to ‘shower’ you with gifts, you even get to go out and pretty much tell them exactly what you want, via a great concept known as ‘registering.’ The big difference between registering for both occasions is that, with marriage, you wander wide-eyed and giddy with excitement around Bed Bath and Beyond, zapping your little light gun at anything that tickles your fancy, no matter how outrageous or useless the item may be. Chocolate fondue fountain? BOOP. 5 different crock pots? BOOP. Twelve gauge salad shooter? BOOP.
But baby shopping is a little different. It’s not this drunken zapfest of electric knives you’ll never use or coffee grinders that will gather dust propping up untouched OxiClean boxes under your sink. No sir, baby shopping is about getting what you NEED. You walk into Babies r’ Us with a list, or several lists, or in-laws with lists, and have to zap things you probably never thought you’d ever actually own. Not only that, but some of these things you add to your list don’t exactly conjure up the same good times you expected when you registered for that margarita maker just before your wedding.
I mean seriously, there have been many an occasion during this process that I have encountered products that seem ludicrous but are apparently indispensable. An aspirator? Yeah, it’s essentially a turkey baster you use to suck snot out of your kid’s nose. BOOP. A Diaper Genie? A sealed bucket to put used diapers in after excessive ‘soiling.’ Seriously, ewww. BOOP. (Besides, cant’t we just use that 10 quart Crockpot that’s rotting in the garage we got for our wedding? We could plug it in to kill the bacteria and what not? Why are you looking at me like that?) An electrically powered breast pump? That costs HOW much? The old wet-dry vac wont work? BOOP.
What the hell is a PeePee TeePee? Never mind, I don’t even want to know. BOOP.
This is all speculation of course – we haven’t actually begun the process of registering, just the process of figuring out the process of registering, which consists of not only “what” to register for, but “where” to register. Babies R’ Us is a given – frankly there just aren’t many baby supply super outlets. Probably some online places, like maybe Baby Center or Amazon. Also Pascale’s Liquor Square (that’s less for baby and more for Daddy.)
We’ve also now have started compiling a list – mostly of the indispensable objects necessary to remove the various goos emanating from our child, but also all the accoutrements necessary to keep them content and ideally sleeping rather than endlessly screaming, and ruining whatever free time I might have to play the Nintendo Wii. I’m also sneaking a few “extra” items on the list – things that will help me cope with the rigors of fatherhood. Like earplugs for example…
