Now that this journal is private, I think I will make more of an effort to post pictures. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures for this post.
Anyway.
C and I, in our first post-roomie fallout reunion, met this past Sunday for some alone time/get other friend a gift for her baby. Our friend, who is currently pregnant, lives in Japan, and is due this month. We missed her baby shower back in Texas, so C and I decided that we would send her a care package of items instead.
We planned on getting her a Kaboost, as suggested by somewhat-new mom, B, but when we went to Babies R Us, we discovered that this Kaboost thing was a bit bigger than we imagined, not to mention a lot heavier. We were hoping for something smaller–something that could fit into one of those shirt box-sized international express mail packs that you play a flat rate for at the post office.
(the picture looks like it would be small, right?)
There is one word to describe Babies R Us, and that is ‘overwhelming.” I did not enjoy being there. I did not find things necessarily cute. In fact, we were well out of our league. We joked that it was like old times: 2 clueless lesbians (that would be me and her) going shopping for baby stuff. Man that store…a store entirely devoted to babies…filled with annoying parents and screaming children…my version of hell. Rows and rows of strollers and car seats. Even more rows of stuff we couldn’t identify. We sifted through aisles of useful baby items, grabbing things that looked ‘modern’ or “design-y’, but then concluded that we had no idea if what we had in our hands was, in fact, useful.
I tried to dig deep to access conversations Ive had with several baby mamas about what they liked, needed, wanted, found useful. Drew a blank. Blind leading the blind, we walked through the store picking up things, wondering how they were used, then putting them back. Mostly, we were guided by packaging. If it looked cool, we considered it.
Finally, we made our way to familiar territory: baby puree cookbook. Nice food photography. Interesting recipes. We put it in the basket. Then on to other familiar territory: clothes. Even better: 30% off rack. After sifting through the onesies (and trying to figure out if a newborn could really fit into the newborn clothes (like can a ‘big baby’ fit into things sized 0-3 months? we didnt know. We have no concept of baby/toddler scale), we stumbled across a great western wear/cowboy ensemble, complete with little cowboy booties.
So that we didn’t appear completely clueless, we also purchased a teething ring. I vaguely remembered something about getting one that looked like beads that had water so you can freeze the thing. We shrugged and picked something that matched the description as closely as we could.
We took a separate trip to the awesome 1.50 store, Daiso, where we picked smaller items to fill out the box — hedgehog picture frame, blue felt mobile, bear shaped puppet sponge, wooden rattle, little books in japanese…these things we had no difficulty picking.
After our exhausting day of shopping, and with our baby-oriented errands finally complete, C and I rewarded ourselves with skinny vanilla lattes from starbucks, and a trip to Petsmart. C’s bf gave her a cute little furball named Scampi for xmas, and so there we were, 2 ‘mom’s, talking about our babies.
Finally, a place where we felt a little more comfortable.
