I'm going to back things up in this post and talk about pre-baby arrival. When Nora and I found out that we were going to have twins, I'm not going to lie it was a lot to handle all at once. When the doctor told us that we were having twins, he hit us with it like he asked if we wanted American or Swiss cheese on our sub at Jersey Mike's. There was no heads up, just one statement I'll never forget, "Both heart beats look great." Wait a minute. Both, as in plural? Two? I was standing to the side of Nora holding her hand and immediately after hearing this news, took my hand off of hers and grabbed the table she was laying on so I didn't fall over. I didn't know what the hell just happened. I actually raised my hand and said something on the lines of question in the back. So at this point there's no turning back. There's two of them coming so lets buckle up.
With twins pretty much everything you buy has to be in multiples of two. Baby things are expensive, and that is when you are buying for just one. With twins on the way, I pretty much came up with the conclusion early on that money to me no longer would have the same meaning. What I mean by this is before having twins, I would make sure to look at what something cost, or total up things while I'm buying them so I knew what the price would be before checking out. Quickly I realized this was a bad idea from the get go. Walking through buy buy baby with your pregnant wife moving slowly and reading every label tallying things up is just disastrous. Once you say, I don't know, you get to $626 and change (I swear I made that number up) and you're only about halfway through the store, you realize that the way you did things before when buying items is not a great idea. I mean what are you going to do not buy your kids a god damn car seat. You need to buy it, and in our case two of them. So there you are, just pushing the stroller through the store hoping there has to be a sale section right?
I want to go through the stores that we used while Nora was pregnant getting ready for Wren and Londyn's arrival. Some stores we still frequently grab things from so lets break them each down individually.
Buy Buy Baby:
First of all, the closest buy buy baby to Nora and I is about 45 minutes away. In Northern Virginia traffic, that easily can turn into a 3 hour trip just to pick up 2 more auto-rock and play's. It's tilting, and all it does is give you more time to realize just how much you are going to spend once you get there. So lets get into the store itself. I think its a baby store that isn't too sexy but also has a pretty good variety of things. We got a majority of the things from here and relatively never had a problem with them outside of the fact that they are too far away just in case we need to just pick something up quickly. The next store is just for that reason.
Baby's R' Us:
We didn't register here, actually I don't know we may have, it doesn't really matter. I hate this store. I feel like I can run from corner to corner in 11 seconds and that's not a good thing because that means their variety sucks. It is 10 minutes away from our house so I can go here when I need to pick up some common things quick, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I compare it to growing up in the 90's as a teenager and your parents either bought you Abercrombie clothes or they didn't and you got bush league Aeropostale. I don't even care if I pissed some people off reading this, it's the truth. In this analogy, every other baby store is Abercrombie and Baby's R' Us is Aeropostale. Deal with it. I'm angry just typing about the store.
Pottery Barn Kids:
By far the nicest of the stores mentioned. This is where we got both cribs, the changing table and a few other things that I'm sure are way overpriced but their name is on it so they can charge an extra $20-$100 per item. They also know what they are doing. Once they get you purchasing things, they also try to sell you on a delivery fee and also an assembly fee if you want it. For those of you that know me, I hate having to put things together. There is always a screw missing, or something doesn't fit where it is suppose too. It's like clockwork. I'm not exaggerating either. I can give you multiple examples of things I bought that needed to be put together that were fucked up before I even started to fuck it up myself. Here, I'll give you one example. Nora and I a few years ago bought this small two chair patio furniture set. Nora went out of town for the weekend, so I decided to try to put it together to surprise her when she got home. I take the shit out of the box, open up the 94 page instructions manual and start to piece things together. I get through the entire thing and only have 1 leg left to put on and low and behold; the manufacture forgot to drill a hole where I conveniently need to place this screw to hold the entire table together. So here I go, having to call them up and jump through fiery hoops to get a real person on the phone only for them to tell me that it happens sometimes. Oh thanks. You know what else happens sometimes? Hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, but that doesn't mean people like it. Unbelievable.
Ok, my rant is over so back to pottery barn. As mentioned above, they try to get you with an assembly fee and I almost bit on it. The lady checking you out literally asks you 28 times if you want to purchase it while she is slamming on the register, but after some thought I decided to not bite on it this time. The only thing I kept seeing was some guy named George coming in to put my children's cribs together and fucking it up. If someone is going to do that, it might as well be me and I'll save about two hunge. Pottery Barn isn't getting this guy with that fee.
Pottery Barn Kids' move also is to have 9 things physically in the store. The other 12,000 are online. I like to actually touch things before dropping a grand, so it be neat if you had more then 4 crib sheet choices when you have 200 to choose from. And why are some only online? It's a crib sheet. You can carry it in the store and I guarantee that more people will buy the blue baby giraffe's jumping over planets if you did this. I should probably pitch this to them because I'm a good guy. They try to push you towards their computer that you can search things on and then purchase them. Isn't this a waste of time and are you trying to piss me off? So you want me to come into your store and do what I can do from my own house? It's amazing actually to watch people come into the store, sit down at their table and get on the computer that is from 1994 to search for items while it freezes every 2 minutes when you switch from their lamp shade selection to baby towels. Actually, now that I think about it more, please keep this option so I can watch pregnant woman scream at their husbands while the computer fucks up. Comedy at its finest.
Lastly, nothing is interchangeable at this store. Buy the changing pad here? You better buck up for the extra money to pay for their changing pad cover because ones from other stores won't fit. Believe me. We tried, and guess what that meant? I had to buy theres and then make another trip back to Baby's R Us to return the original purchase. Shit.
I'm sure that we bought other things at random mom and pop stores, and don't forget etsy. How did pregnant woman survive without etsy? The world just doesn't seem right if you can't find a woman that hand crafts coral colored pillows with white flower ruffles on top. If it does, this guy doesn't want to be part of such a society and to be honest, neither should you..............
With twins pretty much everything you buy has to be in multiples of two. Baby things are expensive, and that is when you are buying for just one. With twins on the way, I pretty much came up with the conclusion early on that money to me no longer would have the same meaning. What I mean by this is before having twins, I would make sure to look at what something cost, or total up things while I'm buying them so I knew what the price would be before checking out. Quickly I realized this was a bad idea from the get go. Walking through buy buy baby with your pregnant wife moving slowly and reading every label tallying things up is just disastrous. Once you say, I don't know, you get to $626 and change (I swear I made that number up) and you're only about halfway through the store, you realize that the way you did things before when buying items is not a great idea. I mean what are you going to do not buy your kids a god damn car seat. You need to buy it, and in our case two of them. So there you are, just pushing the stroller through the store hoping there has to be a sale section right?
I want to go through the stores that we used while Nora was pregnant getting ready for Wren and Londyn's arrival. Some stores we still frequently grab things from so lets break them each down individually.
Buy Buy Baby:
First of all, the closest buy buy baby to Nora and I is about 45 minutes away. In Northern Virginia traffic, that easily can turn into a 3 hour trip just to pick up 2 more auto-rock and play's. It's tilting, and all it does is give you more time to realize just how much you are going to spend once you get there. So lets get into the store itself. I think its a baby store that isn't too sexy but also has a pretty good variety of things. We got a majority of the things from here and relatively never had a problem with them outside of the fact that they are too far away just in case we need to just pick something up quickly. The next store is just for that reason.
Baby's R' Us:
We didn't register here, actually I don't know we may have, it doesn't really matter. I hate this store. I feel like I can run from corner to corner in 11 seconds and that's not a good thing because that means their variety sucks. It is 10 minutes away from our house so I can go here when I need to pick up some common things quick, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I compare it to growing up in the 90's as a teenager and your parents either bought you Abercrombie clothes or they didn't and you got bush league Aeropostale. I don't even care if I pissed some people off reading this, it's the truth. In this analogy, every other baby store is Abercrombie and Baby's R' Us is Aeropostale. Deal with it. I'm angry just typing about the store.
Pottery Barn Kids:
By far the nicest of the stores mentioned. This is where we got both cribs, the changing table and a few other things that I'm sure are way overpriced but their name is on it so they can charge an extra $20-$100 per item. They also know what they are doing. Once they get you purchasing things, they also try to sell you on a delivery fee and also an assembly fee if you want it. For those of you that know me, I hate having to put things together. There is always a screw missing, or something doesn't fit where it is suppose too. It's like clockwork. I'm not exaggerating either. I can give you multiple examples of things I bought that needed to be put together that were fucked up before I even started to fuck it up myself. Here, I'll give you one example. Nora and I a few years ago bought this small two chair patio furniture set. Nora went out of town for the weekend, so I decided to try to put it together to surprise her when she got home. I take the shit out of the box, open up the 94 page instructions manual and start to piece things together. I get through the entire thing and only have 1 leg left to put on and low and behold; the manufacture forgot to drill a hole where I conveniently need to place this screw to hold the entire table together. So here I go, having to call them up and jump through fiery hoops to get a real person on the phone only for them to tell me that it happens sometimes. Oh thanks. You know what else happens sometimes? Hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, but that doesn't mean people like it. Unbelievable.
Ok, my rant is over so back to pottery barn. As mentioned above, they try to get you with an assembly fee and I almost bit on it. The lady checking you out literally asks you 28 times if you want to purchase it while she is slamming on the register, but after some thought I decided to not bite on it this time. The only thing I kept seeing was some guy named George coming in to put my children's cribs together and fucking it up. If someone is going to do that, it might as well be me and I'll save about two hunge. Pottery Barn isn't getting this guy with that fee.
Pottery Barn Kids' move also is to have 9 things physically in the store. The other 12,000 are online. I like to actually touch things before dropping a grand, so it be neat if you had more then 4 crib sheet choices when you have 200 to choose from. And why are some only online? It's a crib sheet. You can carry it in the store and I guarantee that more people will buy the blue baby giraffe's jumping over planets if you did this. I should probably pitch this to them because I'm a good guy. They try to push you towards their computer that you can search things on and then purchase them. Isn't this a waste of time and are you trying to piss me off? So you want me to come into your store and do what I can do from my own house? It's amazing actually to watch people come into the store, sit down at their table and get on the computer that is from 1994 to search for items while it freezes every 2 minutes when you switch from their lamp shade selection to baby towels. Actually, now that I think about it more, please keep this option so I can watch pregnant woman scream at their husbands while the computer fucks up. Comedy at its finest.
Lastly, nothing is interchangeable at this store. Buy the changing pad here? You better buck up for the extra money to pay for their changing pad cover because ones from other stores won't fit. Believe me. We tried, and guess what that meant? I had to buy theres and then make another trip back to Baby's R Us to return the original purchase. Shit.
I'm sure that we bought other things at random mom and pop stores, and don't forget etsy. How did pregnant woman survive without etsy? The world just doesn't seem right if you can't find a woman that hand crafts coral colored pillows with white flower ruffles on top. If it does, this guy doesn't want to be part of such a society and to be honest, neither should you..............