Registering

I realize that I never wrote about our baby registering experiences.  I say experiences because we registered at 3 different places.  So, even though it's long past the fact, I think it's valuable enough to share our story. 

Registering for gifts is one of the hardest things in the world.  I used to romanticize it, like I think many people do, as this amazingly fun time when you get to walk around a store with a laser gun and shoot at all of the things that you've ever wanted.

In reality though, registering is exhausted.  We learned that during our wedding registry experience, and so we were prepared for a similarly difficult experience on the baby front, but it still kicked our butts.

We are now the proud owners of three baby registries - one at Wal-Mart, Target, and Babies R Us.  The Wal-Mart registry is mostly for people from my hometown, since there aren't any Targets or BrUs's nearby, and there are a handful of older relatives invited to my shower that don't really use computers.

But our Babies R Us registry - the first one we did - really kicked our collective butts.  We started out bright and early on a Saturday morning (I highly recommend the morning route if you must go on a weekend - by the time we left, people were waiting in line for registry guns and the place was swamped.)  We followed the advice of the woman at the registry desk and started with some of the bigger items - stroller and carseat.  I had done some research previously on the best/safest car seats, but once we got to Babies R Us we realized it was going to be harder than we initially thought to find something that was both highly rated and that we liked. 

Ultimately, we decided to take a different route - we would register for things that we liked, and then take them off later if they weren't good. (And by "we," I really mean that I would read reviews and take them off later....)  We were at BrUS for about 3 hours, and we did hit most of the big items, but it was so hard to chose things. Most of it doesn't seem like stuff that we really "need," but I know that it's stuff that most people get.  We weren't sure what were "must have" items and what would just be nice to have.  We spent at least 1/2 an hour looking at cribs, and then ultimately deleting the one we selected from the registry.  We spent some time in the gliders (my favorite part of the day) but didn't chose one because most of them were broken or really worn from them being the floor models (same with the cribs, somehow) and so they all seemed super crappy.  We picked bouncers and bedding, mobiles, and monitors.  And finally, after we were both way past cranky, we decided to leave, even though there was an entire half of the store we hadn't hit yet.  Oh well...

My mom and I did our Wal-Mart registry and I'm not sure if this is true of all Wal-Marts or just the one we happened to go to, but their registry system sucked.  First of all, their customer service people didn't even really know how to get us set up with it.  Then we had to log into this machine, which wasn't working, and they didn't know how to fix it.  Somehow we ended up with a registry gun, and fortunately were able to get through the 4 or 5 aisles of baby stuff in an hour and a half or so. 

But we learned later that the Wal-Mart registry woes didn't end there.  People had a hard time using the registry, the cashiers wouldn't scan the registry at all if you didn't give it to them at the beginning of the order, and thus we got a ton of duplicate items and a bunch of things that weren't on the registry at all.  Oh well.... it's easy enough to return things to Wal-Mart so in the end it worked out.

Target was the last place that we registered.  I decided to get DH a little liquored up before this trip, and let me tell you, THAT is what you need to do to get your husband into registering.  He was silly and fun, and especially considering how much we were initially dreading doing yet another registry, this one was most enjoyable.  Yes, he ended up scanning about a dozen toys that we certainly didn't "need" but that were "neat," and at least 2 dozens books.  Fun, random things may or may not have ended up on our registry, including some silly bath toys.  Oh well... kids love silly bath toys, right?  If we were debating one item over another, I could use my sober influence to sway him in my direction, and he was relaxed enough to shrug it off and move on to the next item.  It. Was. Awesome.

So ladies, take this piece of advice - before registering, take your husband out to dinner, make sure he has at least 3 beers, and then head straight to the store to do the registering before the buzz wears off. It will make the experience so much more pleasant for the both of you.