Everyone Needs One of These….(How to Lose your Mind over Baby Stuff)

We’re madly planning for James Hayoung to come home and in reading other bloggers thoughts about this period in their adoption plan (post-referral/pre-arrival) there’s a common theme….chaos. Actually chaos coupled with confusion. Suddenly we’re making a ton of decisions but we’re making them based on a baby that we haven’t met yet. And all of these decisions seem incredibly important when you’re standing in the Mega Baby Store!

For example, let’s consider the following equation:

James is 6 months old now
+
James’ child study was completed at 4 months of age
+
James is a preemie so he’s age-adjusted by about 8 weeks
+
James will be about 9 months old when he arrives home
=

Does James need a Baby Bumbo?

A newborn is a known quantity and comes with a certain skill set in a certain size range. Adopted children arrive all over the milestone and size map. Apparently the list of baby essentials is long and complicated and it only gets more complicated when you speak to salespeople (sorry salespeople, but it’s true). It leaves us both wondering if we really need all of this stuff. Could it all be just a giant scam (similar to the wedding scam where people try to convince you that your guests need a plastic swan with your names on it as a "favor")?

So Alex and I reluctantly visited the Mega Baby Store to figure out what we need. My head hurt instantly and there was a large sucking sound in the vicinity of my wallet. Alex simply looked vacant.

I should mention that we’re responsible people with an aversion to the mass marketing of baby stuff and we want to err on the side of simple/safe. We don’t need cute, we don’t need plastic, we don’t need a character stamped on everything, we need safe/functional. We’re not buying into the tons of useless crap that seems to come with kids. We are immune to anyone that says “you aren’t a good parent if you don’t have a wipe warmer” (Seriously, there is such a thing). We won’t even talk to the sales people about the non-essential stuff until we pick out our car seats. Safety first, folks. We don’t care about cute.

Here is what we came home with (the only thing we came home with):

Cutest. Thing. Ever. The best part is that it sings songs too (although I’ve been warned that I will reach the point where I take the batteries out).

Oh, and we still need car seats.