Routine Weekend

Not too much to report from California.  We had a pretty relaxing, routine weekend.  Jeremy and I disagree slightly about the purpose of weekends, but I think we've been able to come to a pretty good compromise.  Since I work all week (sometimes really long hours) the weekend is my time to catch up on stuff around the house and to do all the get-ready-for-baby chores.  Jeremy is of the opinion that chores really have no role to play in his weekend.  The other day he even said he stopped doing so many chores during the week because he knew I was just going to make him do chores on the weekend (cue sad background music here - it is truly tragic to be Jeremy sometimes).  I then pointed out that if he did chores during the week there would be fewer chores to do on the weekend.  He said that was a trap and if he did the chores during the week I would just come up with new, possibly harder chores on the weekend, so he'd stick with the ones he already knew about. I guess it is hard to argue with that logic! 

The way it ends up working out is that we spend part of each weekend doing stuff around the house and part of the weekend doing fun stuff.  Lately, a big part of our weekends involves tracking down baby stuff.  We have a list of "required baby gear" compiled from recommendations from friends with kids.  We're trying to slowly acquire all the stuff that Bagel will need.  In particular, we're trying to get as much of it used as possible.  A friend of ours uses the phrase "baby-industrial complex" to refer to the pressure/marketing aimed at getting you to buy all kinds of crap for your infant.  All you need is one trip to Babies R Us to realize he's probably right.  There is a lot of pressure to "be a good parent" and spend ridiculous amounts of cash on piles of stuff (much of it plastic) to entertain / protect / clothe / clean / feed / etc your baby.  Not only are you convinced that you absolutely must have all of this stuff, the reality is that much of the useful stuff is really only useful for a very short period of time and then gets discarded.  In addition to the discarding of stuff, the environmental impact of all of this crap is further compounded by all of the packaging/shipping required to get that made-in-Taiwan baby jungle gym to your local Babies R Us.  We're trying to be mindful of both the environmental and budget impacts of having a baby and to reduce our consumption as much as possible.  Not to mention we just don't have the room/money for a ton of unnecessary crap.  We also figure that as the first (non-feline) grandchild on my side of the family, Bagel will end up with plenty of stuff and will in no way feel deprived :)

Several people have asked "but don't you want nice, new stuff?".  Our thought is that nice, new stuff only stays super nice and new if you never let your baby touch it (which kind of defeats the purpose).  Really, once our baby chews on, drools on, poos on, and does other disgusting baby things to our stuff, it is not going to look new (our cats taught us this).  Of course we have our limits.  We'd never buy something used that we thought would endanger Bagel, so we've decided that we'll buy a brand new carseat (or we will potentially time share a carseat with some friends of ours who have a baby a little over a year older than ours will be).  We also have limits on what we think is acceptable to buy used.  For example, there is something about a used mattress that just skeeves us out, so Bagel got a nice, new crib mattress.  Ditto for changing table pad.  Basically, anything that can't be cleaned by either the dishwasher, washing machine, or a good soak in soapy water is something we'd prefer to buy new.  We also got the furniture for Bagel's room new, which we figured was important to do after the recent spate of crib recalls.

What does all of this have to do with our weekend?  Well, a new weekend Gottwood tradition is garage sale-ing on Saturday morning.  We check Craig's List on Friday night to make a list of the sales we want to hit in the area and then head out on Saturday morning.  If Jeremy is good and doesn't get grumpy while shopping, on the way back we stop for lunch at his favorite deli.  We're lucky that our area has tons of good garage sales and since the weather is pretty constant, garage sales are a year-round event.  We've managed to get lots of our big-ticket baby items at garage sales over the last month or so.  This weekend our major find was a great baby swing! 

Another thing we've had a lot of luck with is baby clothes.  Given that infants only wear clothes for about 3 months before they outgrow them, you could end up dropping some serious change outfitting your baby.  Garage sales in our area seem to sell baby clothes for somewhere in the 25-50 cents range which is just about right.  Given that Jeremy thinks it is ridiculous to spend more than $15 on a pair of pants for himself- a pair of pants that he will wear weekly until they disintegrate in the wash - he is definitely on board with baby clothes for less than $1 :)  At this point, we're still trying to buy mostly gender-neutral stuff (actually pretty HARD to find) since we don't know the gender of the baby for sure and it would be great to be able to re-use clothes if we have a second baby (or to dress Danger in them, either way). 

I think that even Jeremy would admit that sometimes we have fun hitting garage sales.  He was sold on a baby bouncy seat when the dad selling it pointed out you could bounce it with your foot while watching football.  If Fisher-Price wants to market to dads, they should start printing information on which baby gear will least interfere with football watching (in particular which gear leaves the most hands free for snacks/remotes). The other benefit for Jeremy of tagging along at garage sales, is that he occasionally finds a really good deal on tools to help outfit his shop in the garage.  This weekend he was practically giddy over finding some $2 clamps.

So, that's how we start our typical weekend - a few garage sales and the deli for lunch.  This Saturday afternoon we came home and took naps in the afternoon and just had a lazy day in general.  Sunday was chores around the house day - we did our grocery shopping and then I made food for the week and did laundry while Jeremy worked on projects in the garage.  Luckily, we also went to a party at a friend's house on Friday night, so we can convince ourselves that we're not completely old and lame ... at least not quite yet.