When you walk around Target and pass the baby section - even if you aren't a parent or grandparent - there is so much cool stuff you just drool. When my oldest was a baby, everything was the new gray (trending at the time) and functional. Baby excitement was limited to what you could cross-stitch and frame. When my #2 came along a decade later, there was more color on car seats and diaper bags and maternity clothes finally stopped looking like cow tents. But now... we can buy the coolest nanny cam or manny diaper bag. We can even get a kid-themed vaporizer. What? The generic ones don't work, or must we constantly entertain or cater to our bambinos?
Here are 12 "must-haves" that I fell for with my starry-new-mama-eyes that in retrospect, really weren't all that mandatory after all:
1. Crib or Bassinet. One only slept in his car seat in the back of our Suburban as I burned gas driving all over town tearfully praying for green lights lest he jerk awake. The bassinet is a romantic idea, but what baby just lays in a lace-draped container perfectly staged nearby? For that matter, what baby uses their expensive "baby blanket"? It dwarfs them. Let's get real and call it what it really is - a toddler blanket.
2. Summer clothes. Being born at the start of a hot, humid summer kept her in a diaper, period.
3. Changing table. Why go all the way upstairs when I can unfurl a mat on the floor and change 'em right here and now?
4. Porta-Crib. It was a baby jail for both my sweeties. When we travelled, they knew it wasn't their real bed and at home it was a cage.
5. Cute toddler dishes. They landed on the floor just like Tupperware.Tupperware is cheaper.
6. Mini Plastic Baby tub. The shower or kitchen sink works even better. Who says a baby doesn't dig a shower? Besides, there isn't a logical place to store that thing without bumping into it. A first item to go in the garage sale.
7. Any toy clipped to any part of a stroller or clothing. When my bambinos were in the stroller, they were too busy looking around to care about any cute plastic thing I supplied to entertain them. Real world works better.
8. Hauling around a diaper bag. Initially it was loaded for nuclear survival. Once I got the hang of it, I left it in the trunk and stuck what might be needed in my cute purse. All good and no chicken coop. If they pooped through their clothes while we were out, the car wasn't that far away and the trunk was a bigger changing table than any in the mall.
9. Baby Powder. If you inhale that stuff your lungs are clogged. Why pat that all over any body part?
10. Plastic toy keys. They only want the real ones, they're not stupid - just babies. Ring a bunch of the lost keys from your junk drawer and presto, just like yours!
11. Cute fabric diaper holder bag coordinated with crib bedding. They come out of the box faster. Putting them in the holder thing takes more time out of your day. Go straight for the box and forget about reloading.
12. Baby monitor. We had them, but were present even more so they really weren't needed. Especially for the kid with the Suburban Crib attached to the hip 24/7 anyway.
Bonus thing I didn't need: cute little baby hairbrush. Bald babies or babies with meager wisps of hair don't need it "brushed".
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