High aspirations, little accomplished

I expected to do a lot today. Baby class in the morning, followed by purchasing a crib, followed by getting our dresser out of storage and organizing all the shower gifts.

In reality, we managed to attend the baby class, which was on breastfeeding. And that's all we accomplished.

It wasn't for lack of trying. After the class, which was in Needham, we had a really delicious lunch at Panera Bread. I am not normally a big fan of Panera Bread, mostly because they seem to put these funky-tasting peppers in all of their vegetarian dishes. But lately, absolutely any food tastes phenomenally delicious to me, and plus, there were none of those peppers in the sandwich and salad I got.

Afterwards, we went to the following stores to try to find a crib: Jordan's, Ikea, Bassett, BJ's, and Babies R Us. Jordan's is a local furniture store that markets itself by emphasizing that it has "underprices." (I think that catches people's attention because it sounds like "underwear"!). They had 4 cribs, all basically the same except for the color. They were all convertible models (we don't need a convertible crib) and they were all almost $700. That wasn't happening. Next, we went to Ikea, and found a great crib. Except that the only colors it came in were Pepto-Bismol pink and Cookie-Monster blue. The other cribs looked pretty flimsy, like portable cribs. Next.

So then we went to Bassett, which is a brand new store. Before, if you wanted Bassett furniture, you had to find it at a more general furniture store. So, when Jim's mom bought us a coffee table a few years ago, she ordered it in Buffalo at the Bassett store, but we picked it up at a general furniture store in Quincy. Anyway, the Bassett store we went into today didn't carry cribs. I've heard that Babies R Us carries Bassett cribs now.

Next, it was BJ's. They also didn't carry cribs, or any furniture except one dresser with very bent drawers. You can buy cribs on-line from BJ's, but not at their store. And by the way, going into BJ's was quite an experience. I hadn't been in one of those wholesale-type stores since college and forgot how Walmart-esq they were. Jim was fascinated with their large blocks of cheese. We bought one of those in college and I think we had it for the whole semester. Just had to scrape off the mold before eating towards the end of the semester. :)

Finally, we caved and went to Babies R Us. I really don't like Babies R Us. We have had quite a fiasco with the crib that we registered for, which I think I've already blogged about. Anyway, we decided to look at other cribs, but really couldn't find anything that we liked in our price range. Plus, the saleswoman said that her computer seemed to indicate that our first-choice crib might be in stock soon. She said it looked like a shipment might be outside the warehouse, waiting to be categorized and stocked. I don't know how she would know this from her computer. Maybe she was making it up. (I wouldn't put it past BRU customer service). But at this point, we were both exhausted and discouraged and decided to get ice cream and go home. Which is what we did. We'll try again next weekend, I guess. They're supposed to call us if the crib is stocked.

We didn't end up getting our dresser out of storage because it is pouring rain/snow and miserable here today. We're going to try to do that tomorrow.

Jim is almost finished with the cradle - he just has to put 2 more coats of polyurethane on the bottom (the part that the mattress will sit on). It looks amazing. I'm really glad we have a cradle lined up because we may not have a crib when the baby comes on the scene.

Still on the agenda for the weekend: grocery shopping, laundry, getting the dresser out, organizing everything.