Babies R Us

Some friends of Curtis's mother are throwing me a baby shower over Christmas break. (I know, totally generous of them!) This forced me into registering for gifts. Now, I had been avoiding Babies R Us, imagining it to be a nightmare of cutsie, useless, over-commercialized junk. In my mind, it was probably going to be a lot like David's Bridal, which I found to be the example of everything wrong with the "wedding industry."

Surprisingly, Babies R Us is nowhere near that bad. They have lots of unfun, uncutsie, but practical items like books, safety locks for toilets, doors, and cabinets, cloth diapers, ointments & medicines, etc. I was three-quarters of the way through the store before I got cutsied-out. I was looking at bedding (which all seemed to feature fat, cartoony animals) and whining to myself, "Don't they have anything that ISN'T cute? I mean this has to go in our bedroom." Fortunately, the next aisle had nice solid colors and plaids. I mean, I like cute baby things, but not on every surface the baby MIGHT come in contact with. (The cute bottles of laundry detergent were just over-the-top.)

All in all it was kinda fun, though it seems like many items might be cheaper elsewhere or available used. Their registry process is very easy and you can tell they are used to dealing with pregnant women. Right after they explain how to use the scanner, they point out where the bathrooms are in the store. The one thing they didn't have was water and snacks.

After being so long in the store, I felt terrible from not eating. I only had $2 and 15 minutes before my prenatal exercise class. I got a sandwich at McDonald's, but I learned that not drinking enough water can do bad things to you. When I got home, I called my doctor, who very nicely told me that everything was fine, but nagged me to drink more water. That'll be the last time I forget to carry a water bottle.