Weddings and Registering

We took our picture late in the week, courtesy of Matthew being out of town. I thought about taking it Friday but I waited until Sat when I knew I would have to look presentable anyway. My co-worker Megan and her husband got married in FL and had a reception back home that we could all come to and celebrate with them. Ironically, Matt's childhood friend Jake also had a reception for his wedding the same weekend. Him and his wife Lesley also got married in FL. So Sat we went to one reception and Sun we went to the other. I of course wore the exact same outfit to both, and now that I think of it, Matt did too :)

Baby girl all dressed up to go to the reception

Aunt Beth :)

Work friends: Stacey, Amy, Alicia, Me, Billie and Beth

Me, Alicia, Megan and Beth

Us with the newlyweds

I was lame and did not take a picture at Jake's reception but it was lovely. Matt caught up with a bunch of childhood friends and basketball teammates from college so they probably didn't want their pictures taken anyway. I was very thankful to have my friend Katie's maternity dress to wear to the occasions. Score for awesome loaner outfits! This was the dress she took her maternity pictures, which were adorable, and I loved it the first time I saw it. She filled it out a little better and made it certifiable maternity with her twins but it served its purpose for me.

This week I was also going to record my registering escapades. I asked Beth to come with me to do the first round of registering. It was the same technique I used for our wedding registries except that time it was with my mom's helpful advice. Since Beth works with me and is around baby paraphernalia all the time but not a biased mom yet herself, I thought she would be the perfect helper. Before I get too far, I will throw out the disclaimer that Matthew prefers we register this way. He thought the wedding process went smoothly and wanted to replicate it with the baby. So what we do is I go first and register for all the smaller items. Then I take him back for round two and he weighs in on all the bigger items. So he had a total of about 8 things to help with for the baby. This leaves him feeling less overwhelmed and able to focus and actually help when his opinion is needed. Besides, the bigger stuff is more stressful anyway.

So I went to Buy Buy Baby first and sat down at the registry counter. An over-energetic lady comes up and asks if she can help me, to which I reply I am here to start a registry. She asks, "For you or someone else?" Who sets up someone else's registry, what a bizarre question? I tell her it is for me and she comments about how I don't even look pregnant. She asked how far along I was and made a shocked face when I answered. Then she asked what I was having. At that point I wanted to say, a monkey...thanks for asking. But I swallowed my tongue and curtly said we were expecting a girl. Then she asked what my log in information was for our account. When I told her I had not set up anything online yet, she instantly seemed confused as to why I would have skipped this step. She responded, "Well looks like you will have to fill out all the paperwork here then before you can start." So I am bracing myself for a bunch of paperwork, not too bothered by it since I sort of like filling out forms, and I am handed one sheet. It asks about 8 questions about names, addresses, due date, shower dates ect. As I am writing down my info, she is sitting across from me trying to type it all into the computer as fast as I write it, reading it all upside down. I slide the form back to her after I am through and she huffs and puffs about my handwriting not being clear enough for her to read upside down and she has to basically retype all the lines she messed up on. I was thinking, you should see what it would have looked like if Matt had filled that out in his 3rd grade handwriting. Then she tries to make small talk as she is editing, which I am not into at this point. She gets to the bottom of the sheet and told me I forgot to fill out the due date. To which I responded, no I didn't we just don't know the due date. I told her baby was coming sometime at the end of June and we weren't going to be fixated on a date. I asked if she could just put June 2012 on our registry. Now she was really looking appalled. "You don't know you due date?! Well I HAVE to have one or we can't set this up." I told her to just pick a date at the end of the month then thinking how dumb is this, I am sure plenty of moms who don't get good prenatal care don't know their due dates....then again those moms probably aren't registering either. So she picks June 3rd and prints off my scanning sheet, because June 3rd is def. at the end of the month. Insert eye roll. Glad to be done with her I get up and start to walk away with the scanner. She hurries around the table and tells me she will give me a little overview of the store. Then she precedes to walk up to the closest item on display and starts to give a sales pitch. At the end of it she asks if she can scan it to my registry. No, no thank you, I do not want that dumb light up turtle that has a speaker feature I can sing to my baby through for $45. So she moves on to the next item on display and proceeds to start another pitch. At this point I cut her off and told her I would come find her if I needed anything and I would be fine from here. That was not an OK response apparently because she launched into a whole talk about essentials for my baby, describing what a boppy, swaddle blanket and bumbo were. I was really annoyed at this point. She never asked if I had other kids or was familiar with baby stuff. I feel like those would have been good questions to ask. She just assumed I was an idiot first time mom who needed her to explain everything to me. As she was explaining how great swaddling was for infants because it comforts them, I interrupted again and said I would be sure to look into swaddle blankets and walked off. Beth arrived a minute later and once she saw me with someone else she finally left me alone.

Then began a very long 3 hours of walking through the store making fun of crazy over the top baby items and debating over what my daughter might actually need. This was harder than I anticipated because of the indecisiveness that has plagued me this whole pregnancy. I kept wondering about our friends and family shopping for us. I would be tempted to not put things on there because they were so practical or boring and not fun to shop for, like safety locks for cabinets. Or I was tempted to pick the cheapest option because that is what Matt and I would most likely buy. But Beth reminded me I would need all these things eventually and I didn't want stuff that wouldn't last multiple kids. So I tried to stay middle of the road. Certain things I knew were going to be expensive but other things floored me. Like playmats with hanging toys and mirrors....ridiculous. Yea I tried to pick one that wasn't obnoxious colors, wasn't scratchy and had a few toys for baby to interact with and it was a crazy amount of money. So then you just feel dumb scanning that. My other option was to not scan anything and potentially forget we didn't have one. So I ended up scanning anything I thought I would need/want to buy at some point almost as a checklist for myself. I figured I could always go back and sort threw things left to buy as she got closer and I wouldn't forget my brainstorming.

After we were done we needed food and drinks asap. We tried going to Yogurtini, which is right across the street, and they were closed! So sad. We settled for SPIN pizza and orange leaf, which was a delicious second option. Then we headed off to Target to finish up. Target was a whole different story. By this time we were a little tired and had looked at this stuff for many hours. We cranked it out in target, scan scan skip scan. I think I scanned more fun mommy things at target like books and clothes but oh well.

Matt and I went back that weekend to finish up and he was a huge help with bigger items, which had been stressing me out since the first trimester. So after many reviews, opinions, advice from friends and family and hours researching I had narrowed down the bigger items to about 2 or 3 in each category. Matt quickly assessed the options, picked his favorite and moved on. It was wonderful to not debate or think about it any more.

And that was my very long memory of our baby registering experience. Glad to have that milestone checked off our list. :)