I learned some lessons on round 1 of the baby ride, especially when it came to baby gear. We bought stuff we liked, we bought stuff we hated, we bought stuff that seemed unnecessary but is OMG VITALLY IMPORTANT and we bought stuff that seemed VITALLY IMPORTANT but ended up being useless.

I discovered a “co-sleeper” is just a  fancy word for “$150 bassinet” and if you plan to actually sleep with the baby you can save yourself $150.

The high chair I thought was very very necessary is collecting dust in the dining room while the clamp-on Phil & Ted’s chair I thought was probably a huge waste of money gets used 3x a day.

Nursery bedding sets are a joke. Buy a pack of 3 fitted sheets. The end.

If your baby hates tummy time, there is no tummy time mat on the planet that will convince them they don’t.

Sometimes a $7 umbrella stroller is all you need – and sometimes spending $400 on a car seat is totally worth it.

But if there was one most important lesson I learned, it’s to READ THE REVIEWS and LISTEN TO YOUR FRIENDS when it comes to baby stuff. If someone on the internet says “Hey, this high chair had a bunch of pieces fall off after a few weeks” they’re probably not making that up. And when your friend says “My kid REALLY loves that Sophie giraffe teether thing” you should stop balking at the $21 price tag and just BUY ONE. So when it comes to the stuff we’re going to need for round 2, I’m not spending a single cent until I get some advice from you.

We need a crib. Eventually. After Baby Sandy starts sleeping in 4 hour chunks of time, outgrows the co-sleeper and I decide I need my bed back. I’m thinking Ikea – they seem pretty well liked, I don’t think they’ve had any major recalls, and some even convert to toddler beds.

Advice needed #1: Does anyone own an Ikea crib they love? Or hate?

We need at least one double stroller. Probably two. I want a side-by-side jogger for Stroller Strides and in case I ever actually, you know, jog. Plus I want a tandem double for regular use, like at the mall or the aquarium or walking around the neighborhood. Since I’m not really interested in the jogging part, my plan is to buy a used side-by-side cheap (like really cheap, like probably from my friend Sarah for $20)(if she still has it)(Hey Sarah, I still want your jogger) and invest in a tandem.

Advice needed #2: Does anyone have a tandem double stroller they love? Or hate? My top choices so far are the Baby Jogger City Select, the (much more afforable) Kolcraft Contour Options Tandem II, the Phil & Teds Inline, or the Uppa Baby VISTA with the doubles kit. Advice on the brands in general is also welcome.

And I think we need another glider/rocking chair. The glider in Baby Evan’s nursery was such a last-minute decision – I had resisted buying one, mostly because the ones at Babies’R’Us seemed so expensive – but it gets used more than any other piece of baby equipment except for the crib. Our current glider is from Target. It is…functional. I mean, the arms are really loose and one of them keeps coming unattached and several screws seem to have fallen out and it squeaks a lot and it doesn’t recline so you can’t really sleep in it. But it still rocks. I guess we’ve gotten our money’s worth in the last 18 months.

Advice needed #3: PLEASE recommend your glider. It doesn’t have to be expensive but it can be. I learned my lesson when it comes to cheap chairs.

That’s it. Unless you have an absolute favorite baby item you cannot live without and want to recommend. Especially if it’s the sort of thing that helped you survive life with TWO children. Because I’m more than willing to take advice.

Giant pile of baby clothes

This is our guest room. Or at least it used to be our guest room. At the moment it’s an extremely large storage closet for Baby Sandy’s things. In that giant pile of stuff, I purchased exactly TWO items – the onesie I got at the Handmade Market and the Uff Da dress right in the front. (Because literally SECONDS after I found out the baby was a girl I was stalking Emily’s site like it was the last source of baby clothes on Earth. I CAN’T WAIT to have an actual baby to wear that dress. And maybe this dress. And this clippie. Which I totally did not buy “for the baby” but wear myself. Nope.)

The REST of that pile is hand me downs. Three giant boxes from my incredibly generous local friend Julie (some of which are second hand hand me downs and yet practically new) full of PINK PINK PINK, two boxes from the gorgeous and stylish Emmie Bee stuffed with Baby Gap, adorable Christmas PJ’s from my friend Sarah, and tiny sized cloth diapers from my friend Cheri.

And then there’s this:

If the shelf looks crooked it's because IT IS. The top part broke from the weight of that many dresses & sweaters.

Those are the vintage baby clothes my mom saved. Some of them are HERS, as in, she wore them as a baby. Amazing. Oh and that shoe holder in the door is 50% bonnets (BONNETS!!! NOT EVEN HATS!), 25% bloomers and 25% shoes or tights. I squee every time I go in there.

And then I cry a little thinking about where I’m going to put it all.

The sad part is this is not the nursery. It’s a guest bedroom we actually plan to use for guests several times in the coming weeks and where my mom will be living when she comes up to rescue me from total exhaustion and failure help with the new baby. Eventually all the baby stuff is supposed to move to the current master bedroom/future second nursery + playroom and our master bedroom will move to the third floor/current junk room + second guest bedroom if we’re REALLY desperate. This pile and closet are just a temporary solution until we can get the rest of the house sorted out – a task I was SUPER EXCITED about for exactly a week, until I actually went up to the third floor and looked at how much stuff we have. Too much. Way too much. I was all set to begin the organizing and moving and getting rid of stuff! Making room in my life! I could totally host a show about how decluttering is the key to true happiness!!

Until I went through a giant box of clothes I haven’t fit in since 2004 and only managed to give away 4 pairs of pants. And one skirt. Things I did not manage to give away include a pair of bleached, holey jeans embroidered with flowers, a tank top that says “bride” in rhinestones, and plastic pink high heeled flip flops (yes, you read that correctly).

There are at least seven more boxes like that one. And that doesn’t include E’s stuff.

Maybe I should stop taking people’s hand-me-downs until I can get rid of some of my own.

Or maybe I’ll just move it all to the basement and try to forget about it. Baby Sandy doesn’t REALLY need a nursery, right?

(Disclaimer 1: Yesterday and last night Baby Evan was a fussy mess. His 3 hour nap was broken up by several crying fits, stayed sad and grumpy most of the afternoon and got up twice last night, a record I would have thought was awesome just a few months ago but now sends me into a spiraling mess of exhaustion and hopelessness, as in “OH GOD I REMEMBER THIS NOT SLEEPING THING AND I CAN. NOT. DO. IT.” )

(Disclaimer 2: I don’t actually have a second child yet, so take everything with a grain of salt. Or maybe a ginormous, huge, Utah salt flats sized block.)

I’ve decided that having a second baby is infinitely easier than having a first baby.

When you’re pregnant the first time, most of your friends are childless. Childless people flock together like beautiful, exotic birds to go out on Saturday night and do fun things like drink alcohol in bars and rub up against each other and plan spur-of-the-moment trips to Thailand or Paris or Antarctica or Mars or whatever fancy location is hip this week. There is no place for babies in that world – it’s too hard to find shoes to match every color of poop. Even if you have a sister or a cousin or a best friend who had babies first, they probably aren’t a part of your daily social circle. You get all your advice from books or message boards or magazines and end up setting incredibly unrealistically high standards for every part of your life as a mom. You struggle through the first few months of babydom alone, or at least feeling alone, until you finally venture out of the house blinking and squinting at the lights like that poor groundhog in Pennsylvania, hoping the long winter is over.

The second time around, your childless friends have flocked away and you hang out with other parents. Parents understand babies. You meet at the library or at a playground or through daycare or a mom’s group or a local baby store. You plan mid-week playdates when all your old friends are at work and only visit coffee shops that have drive thru windows and take trips to the zoo instead of weekends at the spa. You plan to go to France and Antarctica and Mars together…someday. Right now you’re too busy trading baby sitter stats and tips for hiding vegetables in your brownies.

And Thank God for all of that. Mom friends have no problem listening to endless complaints about morning sickness and exhaustion and diaper explosions. They have real world advice on how to deal with teething and spit up and problems latching and first solids. They have maternity clothes in various sizes and seasons that they will lend/give you. Their garages and attics are full of boxes of baby clothes they are dying to get rid of, especially if you are having a baby the opposite gender from the first one. (You will, of course, still buy a few things yourself but you don’t actually have to.) They will watch your kid at the playground while you run off to find a bathroom because you need to pee. AGAIN.

If you’re super lucky, you’re mom’s group will have an organized Mama Meals program and by the time you actually get around to having the second baby your freezer will be stocked with enough frozen lasagnas and casseroles and homemade baked goods to feed an army of hungry husbands and toddlers.

You know that, realistically, you probably won’t need that crib for at least a few months so having a nursery done before 32 weeks gestation is overkill. You already have the baby gear you ACTUALLY couldn’t live without, rather than the things on the Must Have Baby Items Registry List Sponsored By Babies R Us, Enfamil And Your Own Psychotic Need To Plan Ahead.

You know that there IS such a thing as too many newborn size diapers.

And when the second baby actually comes and you’ve got spit up in your hair and haven’t slept in a week and would kill for a pizza instead of a frozen casserole, you will have friends who understand, bring you a frappuccino, and maybe even watch that pesky first kid for an hour or two.

I an 25 weeks today and I haven’t so much as opened my copy of What To Expect this time around. It is glorious.

One of my very earliest memories is of our house in New Jersey, the one we lived in when my little sister was born. It was the first house my parents ever bought and I can only imagine how exciting it was for them to buy the BRAND NEW 4 bedroom, 2 bath colonial with a big yard on a cul-de-sac. Something about being a homeowner just feels so grown up, even more than kids or a minivan or health insurance. I spent oh so many hours running around that neighborhood or playing on the swing set or cutting my own hair and then hiding under a chair so Mom wouldn’t yell at me reading quietly in the family room.

It was a good house.

One of my OTHER earliest memories is sneaking downstairs right around Christmas to find my parents and an aunt and uncle or two huddled around this:

Charming starter home on spacious lot, great location & schools

They were putting the finishing touches on the doll house as a Christmas present. My dad was SO DISAPPOINTED I saw it before Christmas morning. I still remember him rushing me back upstairs and telling me I was absolutely NOT allowed out of bed again no matter what. I tried super hard not to even think about the house – and I know I didn’t talk about it – until it was officially mine, although I don’t think anyone tried to tell me my presents were “from Santa” after that.

Center entry, formal living and dining rooms

The doll house is an exact replica of the actual house we living in in New Jersey, from the floor plan and carpet color right down to the wallpaper. There was no kit or plans, just my dad and a tape measure and his amazing attention to detail.

Even though we moved to Long Island after a couple of years…and California a few years after that…and then Massachusetts…and finally to Virgina, my parents had this GIANT doll house shipped with our stuff EVERY TIME. Dad built a special crate and wrapped it in packing paper and Styrofoam so not a single wall is cracked or damaged even though it’s been almost two decades since it was uncrated.

And ever since I announced I was pregnant the first time my parents been dreaming of the day the dollhouse is no longer their problem. Baby #2’s girl parts sealed the doll house’s fate (although Baby Evan has already greatly enjoyed putting various items in the windows – Attack of the giant corn! Watch out for the tiny killer dump truck! On noes we’re all going to be eaten by the singing frog!) so now it lives in my dining room.

House has great bones, but some cosmetic repairs needed

As well as it was taken care of, NO house can hold up to 20 years of abandonment. Peeling paper, moldy carpets, and water damage all abound.

I’m sort of conflicted about fixing up the doll house – I want it exactly as I remember it (even though it’s already not) and it feels disloyal to my parents to tear apart even a minute of their hard work. But some of that decor is in really bad shape.

Orginal 1980's kitchen and baths. In case you're into "vintage".

Like that middle upstairs bathroom. Yikes.

And I don’t think anyone ANYWHERE still sells that wallpaper, so matching it is out of the question.

I guess I’m going to be redecorating.

FIREPLACE! The highlight of every realtor's tour!

And hey, since I don’t have the time and/or money to redecorate my entire REAL house (again) right now, this is a great place to channel my creative energy. Tiny rooms to paint! Tiny rugs! Tiny appliances! All new tiny furniture! And the best part, there’s only a tiny bit of wallpaper to peel off and carpet to tear up.

Stay tuned for the very exciting renovation coming soon.

Damn, I was hoping for hardwood.

This week I took Baby Evan into the pediatrician for what should have been an easy visit that ended up being incredibly stressful and annoying and bad-mother-guilt-inducing.

Then I had a visit to the emergency room that was the most relaxing part of my weekend.

Doctors are weird.

Because of the weight-loss between his 12 and 15 month check-ups, our pediatrician scheduled a quick weigh-in on Friday for Baby Evan. I knew he’d been eating more and had definitely gained, so I expected a nice “You’re doing great and clearly not neglecting your kid” visit. That’s not quite what I got.

After the nurse weighed him – up almost a pound in 1 month –  the lady pediatrician, one I don’t think I’ve met before, came in to talk to us about what we feed our kid. Want to feel bad about your parenting skills? Try honestly answering that question. Peanut butter, bread, Goldfish, pita chips, cookies, french fries, fruit leather, cheese…yeah, I win mother of the year for sure. I didn’t even bother explaining it’s whole wheat bread! And organic fruit leather! And homemade cookies! And I offer him TONS of fruits and vegetables, I just haven’t figured out how to make him eat them!

Surprisingly, the ped didn’t seem to care much about the totally lack of color in my kid’s diet. She was more concerned that I get him to drink at least five cups of milk a day, offer him even MORE food and having us come back again EVERY MONTH for another weight check. When I went through my list of what caused the original weight loss and why it wouldn’t happen again, she made the same face my mom used to make when I came home late for curfew. The “I don’t care about your excuses” face. The “I doubt your ability to do the right thing” face. It was AWFUL. I’ve been thinking about that face constantly since Friday – every time my kid tosses his cup on the floor, every time he feeds his sandwich to the dog, every time he sleeps through a snack time. Today at the grocery store he ate a whole piece of cheese the deli lady gave him and I almost cried with joy, knowing the doctor would have approved.

You know that feeling you had when you left the hospital with your tiny newborn, the one where you couldn’t believe the staff was just letting you TAKE A BABY without any sort of instruction manual or rules or scheduled home checks to make sure you were doing it right?

This is the opposite of that. This is the feeling that just when you thought you were finally doing everything right and really getting the hang of motherhood someone comes along and tells you you suck. It sucks.

——————————————————–

On Saturday morning I noticed I had had some bleeding the night before and called my OB to see if he wanted me to come in for a rhogam shot. It was an exact repeat – almost to the same DAY of pregnancy & the same OB doc on call – of what happened when I was pregnant the first time (hint: certain grown up activities are apparently a little too much for my cervix to handle after the 22 week mark) only this time around I wasn’t a freaked out mess. I knew what it was, I knew what caused it, I knew the baby was fine. If I had an OB checkup scheduled this week I wouldn’t have even bothered to call on a weekend, but my next appointment isn’t until September and I could just imagine the doctor’s face if I brought up bleeding a MONTH after it happened, especially because he had JUST reminded me to have any bleeding checked out because of the rh-negative thing. O- might be the good blood type for donating but it SUCKS for pregnancy.

The doctor wasn’t super concerned, but said I could go into the ER for a shot “if I wanted”. I told him no, I didn’t really WANT a painful shot in the ass, so I’d just skip it. Of course, then he decided what he really meant was “You should definitely go in for a shot” although why didn’t he just say that in the first place? So I left E and Baby Evan at home and popped over to our very nice local ER for my rhogam.

It’s a funny place, the emergency room. There was an old lady with a broken hip who kept yelling “I’m peeing! I’m peeing! I have to go!” even though the nurse kept coming in to explain it was ok, she had a catheter and was supposed to pee. There was the kid laughing his head off at the doctor’s jokes even though he was still strapped into a car seat – they had been in some sort of fender bender and the paramedics brought the whole thing in on a gurney. There was the tearful family in the room next to me who cried as the doctor explained the definition of a DNR. There was the male nurse who kept saying “This is why people need a primary care physician” and “I wish more people would call their doctors before using the ER as a walk-in clinic” and “Well, the doctor doesn’t KNOW you so he might not just give you whatever medicine you want” despite the fact that I said my OB was right upstairs and said I needed a shot and he could verify my non-drug-seeking status if anyone wanted. Like rhogam is some sort of narcotic that gets you high instead of just making your thigh hurt for a couple days. DUDE, YOU’RE TOTALLY ON TO ME. I’M A JUNKIE FOR SURE.

Like I said, weird place. Happiness and sadness and noise and quiet and fast and slow at all once.

Because everyone has to check with everyone and everyone’s mother and then do a bunch of paperwork about what was said before they could treat me for my non-condition, I spent a good 2 hours just waiting around. I had my knitting with me and managed to finish a whole scarf plus catch up on everything in my Google reader on my iPhone. There were no babies climbing on me, no food being thrown, no dogs running in circles, no loud noises. The doctor was totally cooperative and happy to get out his fancy ultrasound machine to print me some pictures. The paperwork admin lady came in to chat a few times and we talked about kids and babies and pregnancy. After he realized I wasn’t a drug addict or a crazy person, my nurse was very nice and didn’t make me stay for the required 30 minutes post-injection so I could get home and enjoy the beautiful day.

I left feeling like I had taken a mini-vacation. Although next time I’d like one that didn’t involve quite so many needles. Or blood. And maybe included a massage.

But hey, I can’t really complain when I got enough quite time to finish knitting a whole project.

So to sum up: I’m much better at caring for babies that haven’t been born yet. Maybe I’ll just stay pregnant forever.