Babies 'R Us

This weekend, we had to go to Babies 'R Us for an upcoming baby shower gift. I think we were actually both kind of excited since neither of us had been there before. And we are sort of getting sick of shopping via Google.

Holy overwhelming. Since when do babies need as much stuff to fill a ginormous warehouse? Ok, so I know that they don't NEED all that stuff, but I did not realize that babies were so marketed towards. There are special "baby" cotton balls, for crying out loud.

Once we had printed out the list, we decided to purchase a variety of bottles, nipples, bottle brushes that the couple had registered for since we could easily locate the bottle aisle (right next to the registry desk). Now, locating the exact bottles and exact nipples was a challenge. One of my friends who had a baby last year said she broke down crying at the bottle wall. I can see why. Finally, we found all the right code numbers to ensure we had the right stuff.

Of course while we were there, we looked at some things for our own baby (no purchases, obviously). Baby stuff is definitely something you do not pay attention to (or at least WE did not pay attention to) prior to pregnancy. Who knew how many strollers, car seats, breast pumps and other electronic devices that left us looking puzzled there were? "Really? People buy this?" was our reaction more often than not. "What would you use that for?" was another popular phrase.

I totally plan on taking advantage of the experience of my already-mom friends in some departments to whittle down important decisions such as what breast pump do you like? How would you rate your stroller? Do you buy the infant car seat with the carrier thing and the Britax carseat that is good for 8-35lbs? How long do you actually use that carrier thing that snaps into a car seat base? (RE: Britax: I spent a summer doing car seat installs for work so car seats are the only thing I feel like I somewhat know.) Is all baby furniture this ugly? (We know from Google that it is not).

We didn't get through the whole store. I think both of us were on the verge of panic attack so we checked out and got the hell out of there. I know this is unlikely, but I just sort of want this whole baby thing to be as simple as possible. I don't want my house cluttered with 40,000 toys or gadgets for every little thing. I don't want heated bottle warmers and video monitoring gadgets that hook up to the tv.

And one thing's for sure: I don't want the puffy lamb/duck/name your baby farm animal wall hanging.