33 Weeks

Still not being a cooperative little boy!
He's got his momma's lips and his daddy's nose

33 weeks

There are two things on my mind right now. First is the pregnant waddle. It has finally arrived. I woke up yesterday and waddled to the shower and again into work. I figured it was because I was in so much pain. I now have siatic pains I never had before, my hips hurt, and I was being kneed in the upper abdomen all day. But I woke up this morning and again waddled to the shower. It was then that I realized the waddle is here, and I am just too tired to do anything but embrace it.

Its weird when you first start to waddle. You are used to seeing the world the way you normally walk, but when you waddle, you feel the sway back and forth, and you start to notice that your vision sways with you. Its kind of like getting used to glasses for the very first time. You have to get used to looking just through the lens and not anything else.

The second thing on my mind is why do we bother to register for our babies. Yes its a wish list of stuff we want, and its a ton of fun for first time new moms, but we all know because we are all guilty of it, that we just go in and buy whatever we think is cute. Oh we all go in with the best of intentions. We spend hours frustrated with the stupid machine that is supposed to print out the registry for the expectant mom. You look it over and you decide what you will get, but you have no idea where any of the stuff is in the store. You find your first item on the list, but then it happens, you get distracted. Now it can be just about anything that distracts you, it all depends on the person and small little baby things causes their obsession, (oh and each of us has some baby item that just calls to us and we spend hours at that section of the store).

Its at this point we stray from the list of coveted items and start buying based on cuteness. I know I have been guilty of this many times. I go in to get them one of their main items on the list then I find something that a friend loved, so I get that, and then I get to the bib section and I have to buy a few of those, and next thing I know I have one item off my friend's registry and 10 that I just had to get that aren't on it.

Now as an expectant mother I am on the other end of this. Its nice because my friends see stuff in the stores that I didn't get to look at because I mostly registered online, but the problem comes when you open your gifts and five of your friends fell in love with the same thing, but no one knew the other got it. I think I have come up with a solution for this.

Expectant parents should register for really big ticket items only, like nursery items and bedding themes and stuff. The rest of the stuff let people just pick out. I mean come on who knows better about bottles and binky's and toys, the first time mother, or the friend who has been there done that and knows what worked for her kids? Really? But see the stores need to help out with this. When we go to check out they should continue to ask did you purchase for someone who registered with us? If the answer is yes, instead of checking off items that were on the registry, it just keeps track of everything everyone bought. So when we go to print out that list that took us 10 minutes of our lives to figure it, it prints out something useful, a list of what the expectant mother is already being given. This would free us all up to shop in our obsession areas, and when we find that perfect gift that no one would ever think about getting the mother to be. You know the gift, the one that your friend will turn to you and say "you are such a genius to have thought of this, I never would have!", we can check to list to make sure none of her other friends have already beaten us down the road to glory. Because nothing sucks the joy out of the perfect gift like your friend opening the exact same thing before she has had a chance to open yours.