It was bound to happen. Inevitable is the word. You can run hard from the inevitable, but it will always track you down, trip you up and laugh at your skinned knees. Why fight it? Instead, embrace it. Enjoy it. It is inevitable.
And so it went this past weekend, designated officially on the calendar, in federal offices and schools, as baby registration day. Oh, not for all of you people. Simply for the Thompsons. Time for us to go into the baby stores, stare in awe and say things like, “Holy pickled peanut butter, I’ve never seen a breast pump before!”
I love the audacity of some places, giving you handy little lists of things they suggest you register for. Get a day stroller, and a night stroller, and possibly a formal stroller, for when you take baby to the ball in black tie. Stock up on formula, especially if you’re going to breast feed, and buy one pacifier for each day of the baby’s life for the first 15 years, just to be sure.
My wife and I are serious shoppers. We marched into stores with notebooks and baby-stuff books, dog-eared and highlighted. She quizzed store employees on merchandise with questions like, “So, you say this stroller is all-terrain, but has it ever been tested on the boulder-strewn trails of Mt. Kilimanjaro?” or “In 25 words or less, explain to me why on July 22, Cindy Shumacher was unable to release the easy-go latch while grocery shopping at the A&P in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.”
Usually the employee, who has been working at the store approximately 15 minutes, looks at me for reassurance or support. I just give him one of those “She’s pregnant. Better answer the question” shrugs.
Some employees honestly look like they’re being held up at gunpoint, and for easy questions. “So this has four wheels?” she asks and they’re off running for cover.
So many things are needed. I did not know this, but turns out babies actually require lounge wear. And apparently they go through like three sets of clothes a day. So at Baby Gap I bought 1,300 little jumpers, just to be safe.
Babies also apparently need Eddie Bauer tote bags, and designer cribs with DVD players and leather cushions. Babies need homecoming outfits, suede booties, car seat toys, travel mirrors, baby monitors, bassinets, porta-cribs, cribs, temporary cribs (where you put the kid in case there’s been an accident and the hazardous materials crew needs to come in and disinfect) and stroller insect netting (especially important if you live in the Amazon and like to go for a lot of walks.)
This all said, I can see why future dads would hate the experience of registering, but honest to goodness, I had a lot of fun.
I got to play with baby strollers, which are a lot like bumper cars. I got to use a portable scanner. I got to pick out toys. I stared wild-eyed and unsure at a breast pump.
And most of all through that whole experience, I saw very clearly just how real this baby thing is. Bulging bellies don’t make the connection for me. But while goofing off with a stroller, it became very easy to picture a kid in that seat, yelling for me to go faster and crash into a shelf full of car seats. (So I did!)
It became easy to see that kid in a baby bath tub, splashing and flooding the bathroom. And easy envisioning myself struggling with a car seat and the little one sitting there patiently thinking, “Just press the red button, dad!”
Registering is not just baby shopping. It’s the acceptance of the inevitable, that in only a few short months a little bundle of whoknowswhat will forever change my life. And by golly, I’m going to have that after-dinner stroller with a swinging Li’l Johnny monkey and the Ralph Lauren upholstery.