The good news – Scott got our stroller and car seat all figured out today. We’ll actually be allowed to leave the hospital! The bad news – our dog is crazy.
Let’s start with the good. We’ve actually had our stroller and car seat system sitting in our garage for a few weeks now but until this point it almost seemed risky to put it together. So we just looked at it each time we pulled into the garage. “Hmmm, there’s our stroller. We’ll have to get that put together before the baby is born…” I’m almost 31 weeks now, we could have this baby in 7 weeks. It was time. First let me reverse just a tad and tell you that it’s down right mean that so many different strollers and car seats have been invented in recent years. Had I been paid for all of the hours I spent researching strollers and car seats I would have had enough money to fund my own baby gear company (which I would promptly name Just Buy This One and Be Done With It). At any rate, we ended up with the Chicco Cortina/Key Fit Travel System. I felt good about our choice, but I felt great when my ex-boss (who is also an ex-Babies ‘R Us manager) sent the stroller to us with a note saying it was his #1 recommendation to his customers. Satisfaction – turns out I’m awesome at researching.
You know what else I’d do if I owned my own baby gear company? I’d send all products completely assembled. I’d be lying if the thought “how are we suppose to raise a child if we can’t get this damn car seat out of the base?” didn’t go through my head once or twice. Or at least make the instruction manuals ridiculously detailed. You know, color coded, big font, tons of pictures, step-by-step everything. Give first time parents a little confidence in a time when they’re already second guessing this non-reversable decision. How great would it be to have opened that box along with the king of all instruction manuals, to have assembled that stroller as easily as we maneuver through the DVR and to post on our Facebook pages, “I am SO ready to be a Mom, I can do ANYTHING!”
But the good news is, we have a top-rated, completely assembled, ready for baby stroller and car seat system.
And the bad news – our dog is crazy and I’m not sure I can find a way to get the crazy out of him before we bring our son home. At the beginning of my pregnancy I read that you should prepare dogs for a new baby by carrying a doll around and teaching the dog to be gentle with the doll. Well I happen to have loved dolls as a kid so I had my mom fish out my all time favorite doll from the bag she was keeping them all in in her basement. Her name was Elizabeth and she still had the little hospital bracelet on her wrist that she got when I had to get her leg sewn back on at the doll hospital. As long as I’m being honest, we never really used the doll like we were suppose to. For awhile she sat in our family room and if Newport happened to go near her we’d tell him to “be gentle.” Then she moved up to the nursery and I placed her in one of those bouncer things we have (should I know what the actual name for that thing is??). She’s been sitting up there for a few months, and then today Newport got crazy. I was in the room next door painting with the door closed – had to keep the door closed to avoid the disaster we experienced last weekend when we were helping my sister paint her laundry room. Of course she was painting it teal blue (which actually looks fantastic!) and of course Newport walked into the paint tray and then proceeded to walk down her hallway to see what was going on in the kitchen. So the door to the room I was painting stayed closed. The first time I opened the door to go get some water, he was asleep right out side waiting for me. Good dog! The second time I opened the door to find out what that curious noise I kept on hearing was, he was chewing a hole in the back of Elizabeth’s neck. As if he could understand me I shouted, “Newport! When we have a kid are you just going to go grab him out of his bouncy thing and start chewing on him!?” To which he responded by jumping on me, running into the nursery, jumping completely up onto the window ledge (hadn’t seen that one before), jumping off, jumping on me, chewing on the bouncy thing etc. etc. You get the idea. This was immdiately followed by a few sprints around the room I had been painting – yep, I left the door open. Downstairs he made a few laps around the house before crashing through his doggy door and taking off like a bat out of hell around our, excuse me his, backyard. Apparently that got most of the crazy out of his system, but the point is he chewed a hole in the back of the doll that was suppose to be teaching him to “be gentle.” The stroller we had so successfully and confidentely completed had also been up moved up to the nursery. Had I opened the door to find him chewing on that this post would have had an entirely different ending. It was your lucky day Newport. So now we have 2 months to teach him that the nursery is completely, at all times off limits to him. No questions, no exceptions.
You can find updates on that adventure on Newport’s very own blog: newportno.wordpress.com