Firefighters with Scanner Guns

We have set the date for our Adoption Celebration.  It will be April 28, sometime in the evening.  Even though we don't expect to get a referral until the summer, we wanted to do it early so that the weather was still cool enough for out of town guests and because we want to get our nursery set up before our last homestudy.  We are doing a Luau theme for the party since we are planning on decorating the nursery in a Hawaiian/surfer motif.

For the past couple of months, some of my friends and family have been telling me to go register.  I kept putting it off because the adoption didn't feel real at the time.  Now that we have a date for our Adoption Celebration and we are getting closer to the referral, we decided to register.  We decided to register at Babies R Us and Target because those are stores that most people have near them.  I wish though that I could register for hand made items!  This past Sunday we headed out to the stores and got ourselves 'in the system.'

What do two completely overwhelmed firefighters do when they are handed scanner guns at a 'big box' baby store?  We pretend like we are cops.  The scanner guns have some kind of magical capability that make us feel in control in a totally out of control environment.  Plus this is the closest we will ever come to 'hunting down the bad guy.'  Only this time, the bad guy is the overpriced items we get to scan and hope that our friends and family will be gracious enough to purchase for us later on.  I felt a little guilty pulling the trigger on some items but for the sake of time honored traditions, we kept pulling.

If you ever want to be overwhelmed, registering for a baby will do the trick.  Registering for our wedding was a piece of cake compared to this experience.  There are just way too many bottles, bibs, and toys to choose from.  And how do we pick items for a child we don't even know the age of yet?  Do we buy the Step 2 sippy cups or do we buy 6-9month old onsies?  How do we know if this mega set of baby care items is overkill?  The cute, glossy, purple book they hand you at the registration desk doesn't help.  It wants you to buy everything!

I did bring the Baby Bargains book that my dear friend Lisa bought for me.  That book has been a God-send.  It rates everything according to need, safety, reliability, and affordability.  I think I stopped every 5 seconds to check and see if the product we were choosing was up to standard.  It definitely helped.  Although, we still must have looked completely and utterly confused because associates kept asking us if we needed help.  I kept thinking, 'I have a scanner gun in my hands, three books and pages of items we might or might not need!  A search and rescue team is what I need!  Maybe even a SWAT team!'  I can hear it now, 'Ma'am, Sir...put down the scanner gun, step away from the binkies and no one will get hurt.'

All in all we managed to scan about 70-something items at Babies R Us and about 60-something items at Target.  Even though we were confused a little, we did have a good time.  We also got a free gift box from BRU that had a bottle and samples of other items.  It was an experience and we enjoyed it as much as we could.  It reminded us that we are one step closer to our daughter!