when john and i got married, we tried like mad to avoid the hype and seduction of the wedding industry, dropping any lame traditions and purchases we felt ridiculous and substituting homemade craft for most things. just over 6 months later, we were presented with the baby industry and everything we could buy that would clearly make us more competent, less anxious parents and prevent us from losing our hip thirty-something adult status. riiight. add into the mix the limitations of space our apartment presents and the current plans for the nursery "corner" (which actually, to be honest isn't even a corner but is the space between the two front windows at the north end of the unit) and it actually provides some kind of reassuring limitations on what we can and cannot use. for example, we've pretty much decided to put off a crib purchase, opting instead for one of these snuggle nest co-sleepersthat can fit in the bed with us and avoid the getting up and walking to the living room to visit the 'corner'. bonus, instead of the $1100 tiny convertible made-for-nyc-crib we were looking at, it's $40. strollers: holy bat shit are these expensive. i had no idea that strollers cost more than most of the cars that john has owned in his life (then again, some of you saw his last car...eesh). this we may not be able to avoid from the outset but i am very intrigued by the slings available. these are cheap and keep the baby close and seem so much more manageable in manhattan. when searching, i found this website who's claim to fame is that jodie sweeting uses their product. don't remember her? she'd be the annoying 6 year old on the 80s sitcom full house who had a recent cover on people magazine titled "from meth addict to mom". check it out. not the endorsement i trust.
sidebar: john has the most amazing/mortifying pop-culture knowledge base that ever did exist. daily, he appalls me with the amount of devoted brain space occupied by actor, director and movie trivia. most entertaining is his non-biased approach to shows that would normally be remembered by the female gender (facts of life, square pegs, spencer for hire). i just called him asking, who is jodie sweeting? -she was on full house...he replies...and was a meth addict. who remembers this shit? have you no shame bears? no shame?
moving on. the stroller we will likely get is the bugaboo frog retailing for insanity but more affordable if found gently used on ebay. john likes to make fun of my statement that it "turns on a dime". but it does. it really does. the one thing i likely won't skimp on is a breast pump, given the limited space and time provided for nursing residents in hospitals like bellevue. finally, the diaper bag is a perplexing issue to me. isn't this thing just a bag with a bunch of pockets? i can make one of those for god's sake. i also enjoy the "daddy diaper bags" that typically come in a camouflage option. shhh. this isn't a baby. there aren't diapers in here. i'm not really a dad.
unless of course, someone wants to throw down for this ridiculous thing, i think i'll be crafting the diaper bag on my own. (louis vuitton diaper bag...retailing for $2120).