Essential Baby Gear
Nothing like babies to open your heart and open your wallet, right? Welcome to part two of my three-part series on baby-related material acquisition. My last post, on the showers, documented a fairly typical aspect of the baby preparation process. The same can be said for the planned subject of the final post of this series: decorating the babies’ room. This middle post, however, is a little more shameful.
Let’s start with the most justifiable of my recent impulse buys: the baby books! Because we have done oh-so-reliable a job of documenting my pregnancy here on this blog, I decided that baby books were a an obvious must-have for us. Actually, I am hopeful that we’ll be able to make ourselves fill these out, because I remember thoroughly enjoying looking through my baby book when I was younger. Also, with twins, we have a unique opportunity to neglect each child’s baby book equally, rather than going all out with the first kid’s and then forgetting about the second kid’s except for a hastily scrawled “you were born and now you’re in the fourth grade.”
So baby books it was to be, although I probably didn’t have to spring for top-of-the-line baby books. But these had several appealing features: first, they aren’t too cutesy. Second, they are both gender neutral. Third, they coordinate without matching. Fourth, the company offers an optional twin insert page pack, which of course I snapped up right along with the books. Fifth, they were running a buy two, get one cat free special.
We’ve started filling out the pre-birth pages, and even Matt, who was initially skeptical, admitted that it’s kind of fun. When you come to visit us after the babies are born, be sure to badger us to make sure we’re keeping up with them.
This next purchase is also not at all frivolous. In planning ahead for our post-partum hospital stay, we realized that it simply wasn’t practical to expect to lug in our much loved but cumbersome SLR with external flash to capture all those wondrous and bloody first moments. We needed something small and fully automatic. But what, were we going to use cell phone cameras? I don’t think so. So a cute little point-and-shoot (one highly recommended by our photography buff friend Ken) is now standing by, ready to go into the hospital bag and snap zillions of photos that you will all have to look at one at a time and go “awwwwww” convincingly for each and every one.
Okay, I’m going to try to convince you that this last item is also a baby gear essential, but I can’t even make myself fall for it, really. This is my new iPod Touch. You might think that this is an awfully impractical thing for me to buy myself when we have two babies, and all their attendant expenses, on the way, but think of all the ways this will improve the babies’ lives:
1) I will be able to enter Trixie Tracker data from anywhere in the house, thus keeping meticulous track of every diaper, burp, and grunt.
2) I will be able to create baby-specific playlists according to their personal musical tastes.
3) I will be able to have hand-held internet access even during the early days when I am confined to the couch constantly feeding babies, thus discouraging me from becoming one of those lame, out-of-touch moms.
4) I will be able to carry photos of the babies around with me on the large, high definition screen, thus enabling all interested parties (by which I mean everyone I run into, of course) to see their adorability in crystal clear technicolor.
5) I will not resent the babies for forcing me to give up my dreams of having an iPod Touch in order to save my money to give them a better life.
I have also tried to distract you from the frivolousness of this purchase by including a photo of my 34-week belly. Big, right? Makes the iPod look insignificant. Hardly worth noting. La la la.
Filed under Baby Stuff | Tags: gear, Pregnancy, self-delusion | Comments (3)Showers!
About <mumble mumble> weeks ago now, my mom and Mark threw us a wonderful baby shower in New Hampshire, where friends and family were extremely generous in their efforts to prepare us materially for the arrival of the twins. (As for preparing us mentally and practically, most people just shook their heads sympathetically and chuckled, “Good luck with that.”)
My mom did a great job finding cute but not cutesy decor and accessories, including the invitation above, this delicious cake (which matched the design on the plates by nearly complete coincidence — she found the plates after ordering the cake) and M&M favors that said “Sparvey Twins!” on them. I would have included a picture of one of the 10 extra bags of M&Ms I brought home with me, but I…am not sure where they are right now.
I think this picture very nicely demonstrates my supreme comfort with babies. “Hello, small human, thank you for coming to the party. Can I…get you a beverage?” Usually my awkwardness around kids is not that big a deal, but it felt somewhat damning at my own baby shower.
Although you might be distracted by Joy’s rather inexplicable expression of pining for Sandy, the point of this picture is the cute ice-breaker game (and the only game played at the shower): Each guest had a label stuck to his or her back with the name of a famous parent of twins. Everyone had to guess his or her celebrity by asking other guests yes or no questions. Once you figured it out, you could move your label off your back. It was fun, even if I never did figure out Nelson Rockefeller.
The gift opening was great fun and included highlights such as handmade all-over clothing protectors (though I can’t think of how our clothing would possibly be at any greater risk of stainage with babies in the house) and Baby’s First Klan outfits. (If that is in poor taste, I apologize. And I tried to whip off the towel as soon as someone pointed out what it resembled, but the camera was too quick.) I’m sorry we don’t have more photos of the gifts, but I am sure that most if not all of them will make some kind of appearance in the coming months while being used by the babies!
Many thanks to Mark for taking the lovely photos, of course.
We also were very fortunate to have another shower thrown for us in Providence two weeks later, hosted by good friends of ours who spent the entire eight weeks leading up to the event threatening to hire strippers for the occasion. Our friends were incredibly generous and creative with their gifts. We have no photos at all of that shower except for this one I just took of the invitation, but again, I expect you’ll see the fruits of the shower highlighted in future posts.
This is the first of a trio of posts I have in mind regarding the great fun of acquiring STUFF in anticipation of the babies’ arrival. Stay tuned.
Filed under Baby Stuff | Tags: events, gear | Comments (2)29 weeks
Erm, this is late, as usual. And it’s going to be an incomplete post — but more are coming, I promise. We’ve had two baby showers and done lots of decorating of the babies’ room and spent money on incredibly crucial products without which it would certainly be impossible ever to keep a baby alive. But more on all that later.
Mark took these great pictures right around 29 weeks. I think the one of the two of us against the purple wall may be a framer.
He also took some photos of the shower, but we’ll put those in the shower-themed post, coming soon.
To add some substance to this post (defined, admittedly, more in terms of the quantity of words than the quality), I will complain about a pet peeve of mine. Folks, four weeks do not equal a month. Every month of the year except February is two or three days longer than four weeks. This is not usually an issue that needs to be discussed, but it becomes very relevant during pregnancy. If you are 32 weeks pregnant, as I will be tomorrow (despite this being the 29 week post), you are not eight months pregnant, especially given that you have eight weeks to go (in a normal pregnancy). You are, in fact, just over seven months pregnant, thanks to all those nice bonus days in every month. And please don’t be one of those otherwise intelligent people who tells me that “actually, pregnancy is ten months long!” because you gestate for 40 weeks; that would only be true if there were four weeks in a month, which — let’s review — there aren’t. (And never mind that for the first four weeks you don’t know you’re pregnant, and for the first two of those you aren’t even technically pregnant, so don’t try to get extra sympathy for ten months of pregnancy when for all intents and purposes, women experience pregnancy for eight months.)
Whew, I’m glad I got that off my chest! In more positive news, I got an iPod Touch! This was an essential baby purchase, because it will allow me to use more conveniently the Trixie Tracker that Matt posted about previously. That is the only reason I got it. For the sake of the babies. Not yet officially a mother and already I give and give.
Filed under Baby Stuff, Pregnancy | Comments (2)Song
Yeah, a few months ago, I wrote a song for the twins. I figure since they’re about eight weeks away I’d better stop worrying that it doesn’t sound perfect and hurry up and post it.
Awwwwwww.
Filed under Pregnancy | Tags: anticipation, music | Comments (6)