Shopping

We are slowly immersing ourselves in the overwhelming world of baby gear.  On our first outing we started slow, a small boutique near our house.  We tackled the first thing by the door--strollers.  We'll need one of those!  A saleslady came to show us their twin models.  Grand total of 4, whew, that limits the options.  She pointed out the pros and cons of each, and demonstrated how easily they fold up and how heavy they are to get in and out of the car.  We paid attention, took notes, and were quite interested in learning so that we could make the right choice.  Once that demo was finished, we started strolling the rest of the tiny store which couldn't have been bigger than our living room.  After about 2 minutes, we looked at each other, yup, we're done.  Overwhelming.

We rested for the remainder of that day and set out again the next day.  We hit THREE much bigger stores.  We decided to stay focused on strollers and cribs while getting a feel for each of the stores.  Thank God we discovered that there is an inexpensive, lightweight stroller we just drop the infant carrier seats into that will take us through a few months after the babes are born.  Baby Trend Snap N Go.  Sweet deferring of a decision until later.  :)  On to cribs!

By the time we got to the third store, still a big chain, but a little hoity toity, we had lost some of our zeal, ok, pretty much all of it.  We walked around, dismissed every crib as inappropriate, sat in one recliner to "test" it... and left without touching anything else in the store.  I looked at D as we left and asked: Are we going to be terrible parents because baby stores make us want to puke?...

OK, moms and dads out there (anyone out there?).  We would love for you to post up to 3 (no more, please, we can't handle it) absolute must haves to get us started in making our shopping list.  And I mean, links to actual products, not just categories.  We already have our short list of necessities from a compassionate friend with a grand total of the 8 types of things we need before the babies arrive.  Now we need detailed help.  Thanks in advance for your wisdom!

Our favorite product we encountered on our outing:

Baby knee pads?!?!?!!!  For reals?  Doesn't junior also need wrist pads?  But wait, protect his toes, too, oh and get him a helmet.  God help us.  That poor boy will never be able to slide into second.