Baby showers can be fun! Play a game, fawn over a onesie, mow down on cake! But afterwards? I find myself scrambling around to re-evaluate my baby’s needs. I don’t know what to do; I no longer know what it is that I need.
Clothing? Sooo many cute onesies. So, sooo many of them. And how many of them can I even use? My mother was over from Michigan to teach me a thing or two about it, here’s a few things I learned.
Separate clothing into two categories.
- By size on the tag
- Separate by layers.
I didn’t know this, and yes it makes me feel a bit stupid, but a onesie is less like ‘clothing’ per-se and more like long underwear. Meaning, I’ll hardly ever see the cutsie-utsie little things because they’ll be covered (or should be, it’s going to be winter after all) by a warm outfit.
So, not only do I have to make sure I have enough onesies in my baby’s appropriate size (whatever that may be when he comes out, yes it’s a HE!), but I have to make sure there are enough warm outer layer outfits to cover him while it’s cold out. That about doubles my clothing needs.
That brings me to a cold sweat because no matter how much research I do, how much I think I know what’s going on, I really, really, don’t. What else am I missing?
Not that I was relying heavily on the baby shower to provide me with everything I need, but it’s put me back at Zero!
Like my one dear friend, about to have a baby herself, kindly went out and found me some secondhand cloth diapers. That was about the most thoughtful gift I received that day since no one seems to believe that I could be committed to cloth diapering, but it still managed to throw me off. Because they were not the cloth diapers I intended to diaper my child with. They’re all in ones from Bummis and I am just a little concerned that, though they’ll be great for when my child is a little older and bigger, they won’t be able to fit my newborn. And I still see myself folding prefolds, and I love those little Thirsties diapers, so unbelievably useful!
And now I also have to sort out those items that we will never ever use, like one of those seemingly useful tarp-like things that you spread out under the highchair to catch the fallout from feeding time. While I appreciate the thought, I still can’t understand why they’re useful since no matter what you still have to clean it up to reuse it.
It seems like more work than just bending over and wiping up the floor since you have to wipe up a tarpaulin and then dry it, fold it, store it somewhere.
I feel like a bad gift receiver, but maybe that’s just me knowing that I should probably never commit the truth to paper lest the givers read it and learn to think that I’m ungrateful. Though if we’re being honest, who here hasn’t returned the holiday sweater Auntie Annie gave us for Christmas?
We all do what we can to avoid having to find a room to store said sweater; barring the off chance that dear Auntie Annie will come over and want to see it.
Which is the reason I never, ever, stray from the registry. But in my experience, every event where you use a registry (weddings, etc) nobody ever sticks to it. Not complaining. I’m grateful that people think of us at all really, but I’ve never been able to figure it out.
I hate registries.
They are so misleading!
As grateful as we are to be the recipients of so much thoughtfulness, so many people will take their direction and change yours in the process. After the shower, my plans are all washed away.