Can't We Just Call a Snot Sucker a Snot Sucker?

Hell!

         
           
For a truly humbling experience, you should take a little stroll through the baby department in your nearest Target. It’s quite fun, what with all the light blues and pinks and duckies, and bunnies and lady bugs.



Evil smile

There are pictures of smiling babies doing everything from bathing to sitting up, to crawling to pooping their brand new, snuggable diapers. You can tell they’re pooping because the ones on the diaper boxes always have the most evil smiles.

You can get lost in the array of bottles and bottle cleaners, soaps, lotions, bibs (my God! The bibs!), formula, binkies, teethers and a whole bunch of other things that are meant to go in (or keep things out of) your baby’s mouth.

If you look in the right section, you can even catch a glimpse of a boob. Or multiple glimpses if you’re wife isn’t looking.

At the end of the aisles stretches a whole other section which is, basically, an infant vehicle showroom. There are strollers with 8 wheels, three wheels, covers, no covers, covers with windows, recliners, cup holders, Cheerio holders and even one that had an iPod dock so you can listen to Shania Twain while you’re pushing your poopy spawn through the mall.

           

Yes, that's really an iPod dock

 It’s all very fun and exciting. And, if you’re registering for stuff you don’t want to buy, but will take for free from friends (as we were), they even give you a gun to scan your would-be booty with. I should say they give the daddy-to-be the gun because I saw four or five other couples registering and the guy was always the one with the gun. It's hunting and gathering in a whole new, sterile, ducky-filled, technological level. Although, in part because this is Martin County, there was one guy who was wearing camouflage. He didn’t want the 3-6 month, bluebird-designed Nuk to get away, I guess.

A Nuk, by the way, is something you stick in the baby’s mouth when they start crying too much. Shuts them right up and causes their front teeth to become buck teeth when they grow up. But it’s worth it because it shuts them up. Some even have the ability to put medicine (or whiskey, your choice) in the Nuk handle so the kid is sucking it up, all the while ruining their orthodontal future.



Just add Jack Dan...,um, children's medicine



Speaking of things that aren’t called what they should be…snot suckers are actually called newborn nasal aspirators. Do you think new parents actually ask each other to pass the newborn nasal aspirator? NO!!! They say, “Where in the hell is that snot sucker?” as they crawl around on their hands and knees, looking under the couch, or behind the toilet.

That said, this whole registering this is simple, right?

Lesson 1: Bottles.

What looks like
a standard
bottle.

There are soooooooooo many bottles and they come in every shape and size imaginable. You can get a straight one, or one that’s bent in the middle (I don’t know why). Some have bags in them. Some say they prevent colic. Some say lower air intake. There are different ones for newborns and those 3-6 months old and those older than that.

Yes, we were overwhelmed by baby bottles. Sad.

But that was only the beginning.

This may as well be a Ferrari

Lesson 2: Picking a stroller is equivalent to buying a car. They all have different features (although the easy-to-fold ones are still rarely that) and they all have pro’s and con’s. Snap-and-go. Britax, Graco. It was explained to us that some are better for traveling, some are better for exercising and some are better for, say, Disney World. Or the mall. Or walking around Babies R’ Us as you finish registering for stuff you should have registered for before she was born, but simply ran out of time.  



None are easy to choose.

Lesson 3: Diapers. Nice and easy, right? Go find the one that says “Newborn” and buy that for her for right after she’s born. 3-6 months is for when she’s 3-6 months. 6-18 months, etc. Basically, Huggies and Pampers have a stranglehold on the U.S. diaper industry, so you go with one of them. And, oh, by the way, none of those numbers mean a DAMNED thing. Your kid could be 4 months and be in the 6-18 month diapers. Or she could be 9 months and be in the 3-6 month diapers. It's nice that they spent the ink to confuse us though. We picked up two packages of Pampers because they were on sale and you got a $10 gift card with the purchase.

This is a shot in the dark

After carrying them around for about 45 minutes, a woman who was shopping with her bald 8-month old, stopped us and asked if this was our first baby. She then proceeded to tell us how Pampers gave her child a rash and all she could wear were Huggies and this is why and blah blah blah blah. It’s weird that people feel they have the right to talk to you just because they have a kid and you’re on your way. But she was helpful. I guess.

So we turned around and picked up two packages of Huggies which, luckily, came with the same $10 gift card and were also on sale. We still don’t know how the baby will react to them, but at least we have 304 to test on her.

The problem is, unlike registering for your wedding, where all you do is run around Bed, Bath and Beyond with a gun and shoot cool things like shot glass combo sets, barware and bath towels. Or stroll through Dillards and scan in crazy China patterns, leopard print silk sheets and silverware sets (20 percent of you won’t be able to find 5 years later), there is actually a degree of responsibility when doing this baby thing.

I mean, you can’t be registering for a bib that says “Cool Dude” in big blue letters, when you’re having a girl. That’s just not right. More importantly, you have to make sure the things you do scan in will actually be helpful when the baby gets here. And they have to match when you get them home. You don't want a mismatched pack-n-play, high chair and baby seat, do you? That's just tacky.

For the record, it was one and a half hours in Target on Saturday and more than an hour in Babies R’ Us on Sunday, in which we only covered about 1/8^th of the store before we had to go watch the Dolphins play one of the worst games of the season.

Despite Chad Henne's inability to complete a pass to a guy in a white jersey, I would have rather gone hoarse yelling obscenities at a big screen TV, than trying to figure out which snot sucker I'm going to lose behind the toilet.

Doesn't this look fun?