Sale

Six days?! I sometimes just don't blog. But more importantly, it's two days till Christmas. Well, sort of. It's technically the 23rd, but I haven't gone to sleep yet, making it still the 22nd mentally.

And it's 3:30 a.m. and I'm up, battling sour heartburn as usual. Also, I took a long, long nap today accidentally (The nap was intentional, the fact it went three hours was not).

I had to get up at the ungodly (not really) hour of 8:30 this morning to go to the hospital to get a blood product to prevent my body from potentially attacking future fetuses. I'm O- and the Dude is B+, hence if blood mixes, I create antibodies, and so on. Bad news. Except I ain't doing this more than once, dagnabbit. But the medical community don't see the sense in closing doors on yourself. So very well.

Yesterday we got our first baby gifts from Matt's dad and stepmom, plus a couple others from our hometown who wish us well. It made it so real. Painting the nursery? Having a crib delivered? Seeing the ultrasound? Feeling actual kicks inside of me? Somehow I've managed to experience them in the abstract. Tangibly holding things my baby would wear really hit me. How's that for weird?

Holding a little toy lamb and soft blankets and infant pyjamas really hit me. I mean, right now my baby is kicking me so hard it's moving my abdomen up and down. But holding the things I'll use to care for and nurture him or her really moved me. And there was the horse. Matt's stepmom painted this gorgeous carousel horse for the nursery and I love it. Handmade and sentimental, the sort of thing my own mom would have given me. I'll take a picture of it soon, when it's not almost 4:00 a.m.

Our stroller was delivered yesterday too. The aforementioned generous dad and stepmom gave us $500 to buy a stroller a couple months ago. We had budgeted around $200, but SM insisted we needed something of quality and wanted to gift us a stroller. So I looked around online, reading reviews and we tested this bad boy out:

Urbo stroller from Mamas & Papas

It retails for about $579 in Canada, which after tax is an exorbitant amount of money, about $654. When one receives $500 for a stroller, paying anything further out of pocket just feels like frivolous bad planning and parenting over-excess. So I waited. And waited. And hoped the dang thing would go on sale, though I sincerely doubted it would.

And then it totally did, a whopping 25% off, and after tax I got the thing for $502. Boom. Sales fill me with joy. Good deals sing in my ear. This elegant contraption, which is now the closest thing we own to a vehicle, turns on a dime and is the lightest full-size stroller we could find/afford. It's narrow and more compact, making it a less intrusive option for taking it on the TTC. It's got thick single wheels that are good for snow, and is welded and sturdy. The seat comes off and can hold a car seat, and the actual seat can face either direction and it reclines.

How it performs for us over the next few years will obviously colour my feelings significantly. But it's designed for urban life, which I live, so I have reasonably high hopes.

My next big purchase will be cloth diapers. For the brand I want in the amount I'll likely need, the cloth wipes, the washable diaper pail bags, and wet sacks for a diaper bag, it'll probably run me about $850. That's less than what it costs per year in this country to diaper a baby in disposables, and it'll be all I need for the whole duration of pre-potty training life.

Actually sitting down and committing to spending that amount upfront? It'll take awhile. And anyway, sales. There could always be a sale.