Gearing up

About two weeks before Linden made her surprise entrance, Laine and I started the daunting task of creating a baby registry. I was excited because, unlike some husbands, I enjoyed creating a wedding registry.

There's a crucial difference between a wedding registry and a baby registry though. With a wedding registry, you have experience with most of the items you register for, even if you've never owned them. For example, I was familiar with how to use an immersion blender, even though I'd never owned one. This is not the case for baby gear. I've seen parents and babies use some of the products we've registered for but never given any consideration to personal preference. I'm still not even sure what the primary purpose of a "playard" is.

Then there's the added layer of slight anxiety, knowing that you're going to be sharing your selections with your friends and families, most of whom have much more experience with these items than us. From my very limited experience, parents have strong opinions regarding what products work well for babies. And while I don't believe any of our friends and family to be judgmental, I imagine it would be hard for parents not to question why we selected, say, one high chair over another.

The answer would not be satisfying. For many items we just looked at online reviews from people we don't know, compared that against what we thought would work in our house and fit our way of doing things, and clicked a button. There were other items that came highly recommended from friends, family and coworkers and that made some of our decisions very easy. We created one at Amazon, Target, and our friend's cloth diapering store Pinstripes and Polkadots.

And after all that hard work, we ended up having to cancel our two showers because they were scheduled to take place the weekend after Linden was born. At least it gave Laine and I an opportunity to talk through how we'll prepare for Linden's move home. One perk of her early arrival is that we now have time to get to know her preferences a bit and imagine her using the items we purchase, which is a bit easier than registering for a hypothetical baby.