Equipment totally rules

Everyone will tell you that babies need a lot of stuff. But what they don't tell you is that babies give you, the consumer, endless opportunity for guilt-free spending. Granted, I don't have much guilt about consumption anyway; it's what separates us from the animals and the French.

Marci and I have been preparing the nest, though we won't have our new house until Friday. I'll detail some of the items we went with after (my) extensive research.

Since they don't let you leave the hospital without one, we purchased this infant car seat from Peg Perego. Italians drive like nuts so I assume this seat is extra safe. I had officer B. from my local police department install the base for me, though it took me three visits to the station before I could successfully connect with a "car seat tech." On one of the visits, the officer had been called away to address an attempted suicide. I asked the dispatcher what she thought was more important, some random unsuccessful suicide, or my car seat? After all, I had an appointment.

I mentioned in an earlier post how frightening most bassinets are, so we had a bit of trouble finding one that didn't look like home to Rosemary's Baby. I was initially sold on this number, but, given the fact that The Peanut might only use it for a couple months, I decided to scale back a bit and go with this one from Eddie Bower. It's actually tough, overall, to find baby items in calm hues. I wanted to avoid electronic music generating gizmos, since they're usually annoying and tacky, but the EB bassinet does play a few tunes. We'll just leave the batteries out of it.

However, after swearing off infant electronica, I found this swing by Fisher-Price. It's unique because it plays "white noise" like frogs, rain, and crickets. I heard the sample online and it sounded pretty relaxing to me. I actually wasn't even in the market for a swing, but a woman in my office for the past few weeks has been yelling about how she couldn't have survived without one. I went ahead and also purchased the related bouncer, since it was available off the shelf. I'm also ordering this bouncer, which beats the Fisher-Price version on style points.

I spent an inordinant amount of time determining which stroller we would buy. I was totally sold on the Bugaboo Frog, until I saw one in real life. It had little in the way of storage, and the design everyone raves about just didn't grab me as much in peson. I know that Bugaboo folks will totally disagree, since they're kind of a religious cult, but I do think that dropping almost a thousand bucks on a stroller motivates them to heap praise on it to justify the expense.

With some research and the help of two great woman at a nearby baby boutique, we went with the Valco Runabout. The company began in Austrailia, I learned, and their strollers are starting to get popular here. I was really impressed with how easily the thing collapses, plus, you can steer it with one hand. The front wheel has a swivel lock for faster travelling, though I'll have to get a true jogger if I want to do serious running next spring.

For visiting the parents or travelling other places, this play yard from Combi seemed like a good choice. Marci's sister bought it for us, and it will really be useful. It's still all boxed up for our impending move, but it looks quick to assemble. Again, it was low on the overly happy vivid color scale, and was absent of ruffles and frillys, so it caught our attention. Combi also has cool stuff for later, like a training version of chopsticks for kids.

We looked up and down the price scale for cribs, and eventually settled on a straightfoward model from Target. It has storage beneath, and has gotten all sorts of rave reviews from people who use it. I've seen "modern chic" cribs for much more, with pretty similar design. My parents just ordered this for us, and we picked up a matching changing table.

Looking ahead, I'm looking forward to getting The Peanut some of these dudes from KidRobot, which has to be the world's coolest toy site. I'm probably just shopping for myself in this case.

We're taking the hospital tour this weekend, so more on that soon . . .