Week 24: Registering, round two

Registering the first time around was right out of the movies. My husband and I blissfully strolled down aisle after aisle taking our time to scour the list of store suggested items. We giggled and scanned and giggled some more talking about all of the sweet baby moments that were to come. Registering this time around was just a little different, all thanks to the fact that we brought a sweet little helper with us, our 17-month-old. Now, before you think I’m totally crazy, there are two reasons why I thought this would be an OK idea …
The first was that we really only had about 10 things on our list. See, we already have so much of what we need because we just did this whole “having a baby” thing a little over a year ago. We have most of the baby essentials covered, so we were filling our list with fun extras, clothes and a lot of diapers. We knew we wanted some new little baby toys because the ones my daughter used had all sorts of remnants of drool, spit-up and baby food that I am sure I could never fully clean off. Clothes were something else we knew we needed because all of our hand-me-downs are girl clothes. Plus, we are pretty picky when it comes to clothes. (We like neutral colors and think that teddy bears playing baseball belong in children’s books.) Then, the real reason we are even having another baby shower: the diapers.

The second thing that made me think bringing Elouise was a fine idea is that she is pretty much the sweetest and cutest thing ever. She honestly makes everything more fun, which is why we often opt to bring her places rather than get a sitter. This should have been an easy 30-minute trip, no problem.
Yet, boy oh boy, I think my sweet child saved up her crazy chips to cash in on this day. For the first time ever I was actually embarrassed in a store. I even had one of those moments where I debated getting some sort of candy to bribe her into submission. We tried our healthy snacks, getting her involved in the process of picking things out, and we even let her hold the scanner gun. I’m not sure if that’s technically allowed, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
When we finally had finished and were walking up to the registry counter—that’s when the real meltdown began. As our child was losing her mind, the worker seemed to look confused and slightly flustered. I was thinking, Yes lady, I know my child is a hot mess. Please just give us our bag of coupons, so we can get out of here!
Then she said, “Um, so I’m not sure why, but it says you didn’t scan anything.” At that point I felt myself on the verge of a meltdown of my own. She frantically started typing things and printing papers to try scanning to see if she could fix it. Thankfully, she was able to recover our scanned items, and we quickly headed home to get our daughter down for her nap. The moral of the story is: When registering for a second (or third, or fourth) child either make it a date night or do all of your registering online.