Long-winded registry information
Now back to the practical. We went to Babies R Us and got our gear! It was lot's of fun, and yeah, pretty tiring.
The store is beautiful, the system perfect. You come to the store, they give you a list and a scanner and you go around picking things by scanning their product codes. When you're done, they upload the information on their website. It's genius. You spend over two hours shopping and leave the place without paying! ;)
Anyway, we shopped for all our furniture, trying to figure out what we needed. Being first-time parents this is hard hard hard. I know, experienced parents can help, but only so much. After all we will be different parents with different children, some things just have to be figured out. We were overwhelmed with the choices... Lincoln and I both concluded it's just a ploy to make the consumer feel inadequate... leaving the store with this doubting feeling, that maybe they made the WRONGEST choices and just bought the unsafest stroller and the leakiest crib pads.
Good thing that Lincoln and I have quite similar attitudes when it comes to shopping. No big fuss, go for what you need, if you like it, take it and onto the next. It took us "only" two and a half hours to basically pick every major item. We were exhausted.
Now an explanation to those of you who consider getting us something from the list... You can go to the Babies R Us store and give them our names and they will give you the list. You can go online (link is below) www.babiesrus.com and enter my name into the baby registry search box. It's pretty easy.
Now to the stuff... we purposely picked only a few minor items, like clothes, toys or accessories and this for the following reason: We are not very particular about those things. Baby stuff is almost always really cute, so we don't mind being surprised and not receiving the exact bib we saw in the store. We think, if you want to get a cute outfit, just pick the one you love best and we'll be happy. The same goes for blankets, socks, hats, photo albums etc. We stilll added some of these items though, just to give people an idea, who might be a little at loss... like we were :).
Some of the items are not available for online purchase, only at the store... that, well, sucks. But we can't do anything about it. If you don't have a Babies R Us - store near, just pick something else or you can get a gift card - if that's what you prefer. Other items again, are out of stock or "currently not available" - because of that I sometimes picked two versions of the same item, so hopefully one of the two is there.
All in all as profane as a gift registry is, we really are grateful for every gift and have made this list as much for you as for us. We needed to see in one spot what we would need and what we would purchase down the road. I guess I still feel uncomfortable with the idea of making a list of gifts and then giving it to people. You just can't help but think it's rude, so please, if you feel insulted, don't tell me :)
Are registries an American thing? For both weddings and babies?
Must be fun to run through a store with a little scanning gun. Sounds like a good time to me. :-)