The Stroller Diaries... misadventures on the way to becoming parents

Friday morning Daniel and I had an OB appointment. The best part was {should have been} the 3D/4D ultrasound. Unfortunately our little guy refused to show us his face. Everything else looked great. Hopefully he will be more cooperative when we go back in two weeks for my glucose test.

Other than our failed attempt at a 3D head shot, all appeared to be well. He is the appropriate size and is weighing in right at 2 pounds {a month ago he was 1 lb 1oz}. He was moving around quite a bit but I was still not feeling much – the ultrasound tech confirmed that my placenta is anterior {in front} which is probably why I haven't felt him that often. No worries though since he is healthy and growing. 

After our appointment we had lunch at Chick-fil-a before heading over to the dreaded Baby's 'R Us. I know that there are people who adore the whole registering for their baby experience, but Daniel and I are not those people. Mostly this stems from the fact that neither of us are really shoppers. When we do shop, it tends to be for big ticket items that we research like crazy before making any kind of purchasing decision.

Baby's 'R Us is a daunting place, though the process of getting started was relatively painless. We found ourselves walking around the store a bit overwhelmed before getting stuck in the stroller section. We had spent some time researching strollers online, but nothing really compares to actually touching them. All the while, we have continued to ponder "How often do these gargantuan travel stroller systems really get used... our parents didn't have these systems and we turned out fine..."

We would love a good jogging stroller but they aren't a part of a "system" and we will probably just get one off of Craigslist later...

That being said, we did spend some time fooling around with the contraptions. During our time in the stroller aisle Daniel found himself struggling to take the infant carrier out of the Graco Flipit Travel System. This system soon had him leaning the stroller down on its back and turning the infant carrier upside down in an effort to remove it. 

At this inopportune moment another customer {a mom} walked up to us looking mortified. She couldn't help but stop to inform us of the correct way to remove the carrier – evidently there is a red button you push. Who knew? We told her we were new parents to be and quickly assured her that we would never turn an infant carrier upside down with an infant in it. She probably thought we were out of our minds...

To make matters worse, after the carrier was removed, Daniel proceeded to collapse the silly thing so that we would have an idea of how {ahem} small it folds down to. Then he tried to unfold the stroller back to its normal stroller state. No dice. Neither of us could figure out how to unfold the stupid thing. 

On top of that, we couldn't find an employee to show us to fix it and there was no manual. I looked up reviews on the registery device which all touted how easy the contraption was to use and how you could unfold it with one hand without reading instructions. Blah. Blah. Blah. We were beginning to feel like we would make terrible parents...

I told Daniel that he should just to put it back on the shelf and we should just walk away but he insisted on rolling it to the front of the store to ask an employee to show him how to unfold it. Unfortunately for him, the lady from earlier was also at the front of the store. Thankfully it turned out that the stroller was actually broken and we didn't feel as incompetent as we were beginning to suspect we might be.

After this incident we checked out the S1 by Safety 1st AeroLite Premier Travel System Stroller which we liked better... though we still aren't sold 100% on owning a travel stroller system.*

We browsed the rest of the store, haphazardly adding appropriate items – mostly little things {the more expensive items were easy to add since we had done our research}. Finally we collapsed in the rocker section of the store and mourned the fact that {at some point} we still needed to go to Target {and possibly Walmart} to do this.

I remember how much we hated registering for our wedding stuff. We did get a lot of great things that we have used over the years. We also got a lot of things we never used or that we kept and used even though we didn't really like them or our tastes had changed. I feel like registering for baby stuff will be the same. What we think is necessary a year from now will be totally different from what we think is good right now...

*Note: If you happen to look at our {incomplete} registery, please do not buy us a travel stroller system – we added about five different models for further research. When we have made a final decision, we will delete all but one.