Your kid's name in the periodic table letters!
This is now the name of one of my Pinterest boards. If no one has roped you into Pinterest yet and you are still being productive while listening to hold music at your job… turn around and walk away or follow the white rabbit get sucked into the vortex. Pinterest is a fabulous place to look at all of the things that people have deemed hip/crafty/absolute necessities for accessorizing your child’s life. If you’re anything like me, you’ve developed a healthy Pinterest/Etsy relationship wherein you find something “super cute” or that’s “an absolute must” on Pinterest and then decide that while that is very crafty, you are not so much the crafty type, so you go over one tab to your Etsy and buy it from someone who will happily craft it for you in “any color that you chose to compliment your new bundle of joy.” This is the part where my husband starts to gag and asks if we can please avoid both primary colors and pastels in the raising of our child. Probably not.
Outside of this there is the actual stuff that you need. I’ve read the magazines and bounced ideas off of friends and started an oddly coordinated registry on Amazon, which also serves as a reminder that I still haven’t bought a lot of stuff yet should probably get on that. Here’s my favorite thing about Amazon’s registry, in order to help give you ideas, they show you registries of other people that they have deemed to be “similar to you”. I knew that I was on the right track when the first one had a copy of Civilization IV in the baby registry.
Looking through someone else’s baby registry can be inspiring. Big floppy hat and special baby sunscreen… hadn’t thought of that, good idea Andrea and John in Virginia. It can also be very helpful. Hmmmm you’re getting all one brand of bottles, but a difference brand of sterilizer bags. What do you know that I don’t, Kelly and Daniel in New Jersey? It can also be incredibly frustrating. Really Jenn and Nick in California? Does everything have to be either leopard print or pink camo, really? Next. Regardless, I find the whole endeavor to be mostly an amusing balance of those fabulous Think Geek onesies that I’ve always wanted my kid to wear and things like burp rags, which I spent no less than 15 minutes staring at last night . Let me ask the actual parent types this. If I can buy blankets in coordinated yellow colors and I can buy burp rags in coordinated yellow colors…. will I be able to tell the difference after 2 months between my blankets and my burp rags or am I simply going to be cursing myself for buying too much yellow crap? There should be an app that combs through the stuff you plan on buying for your child and tells you where you’re going wrong. Hmmm that gives me an idea. I should send it to my mother.
