Yesterday was a busy day, but it ended in us getting a crib and changing table! Even though the crib is probably one of the biggest and most important decisions in baby-related purchases, this was least enjoyable process overall for me. I felt like there weren't many options available in my area, and as a result, we selected the crib based on what we could find, not which crib was best. For starters, we do not have a Babies 'R Us, Land of Nod, or Buy Buy Baby in our area. As we found out, most regular furniture stores do not sell baby furniture. Or, if they used to sell baby furniture, they stopped as of the crib recall in 2010 (by the way, BabyCenter.com has compiled a great list of easily searchable product recalls). I read that the best brands are Munire, Westwood and Bonavita, but could not find a store near us that carries any of those brands and we didn't want to buy a crib sight unseen. Department stores like JC Penney and Sears only sell cribs online (in our area, at least).
We stopped at a Babies 'R Us one day while visiting my mom. We found three cribs we liked, and after a week of comparing, made a final choice. BabiesRUs.com has a giant graphic on the product description of most cribs that says "FREE SHIPPING"! Awesome, right? I thought so, until I saw the $500 shipping fee as I was entering my credit card info. Apparently, that's free shipping up to $20, which of course, is absolutely useless when it comes to cribs. (Hey, I ordered our entertainment center online with free shipping, so I maintain that it is not completely idiotic to think free shipping could apply to furniture.)
After a little searching, I found one furniture store in our area that sells cribs...only to get there and find out they do not keep stock; all of their cribs are ordered online. They were also way out of our price range--the set would have been more than we spent on the real oak set in our bedroom! It's kid furniture; I want nice, but not so nice that I'm going to freak out when it gets destroyed by crayon, or whatever other crazy thing the kid decides to do to it. None of the employees seemed to have much knowledge about cribs either. Since it's not a core function of their business, they couldn't say much beyond "oh, these cribs are very safe."
So, we checked Target. At this point, our only criteria was whether or not it was cute and not recalled. So we found one. Not available at any store within 80 miles, and Target.com does not offer in-store pickup. In our second choice set, the store had one changing table, which we bought, and the crib was available at a store 45 minutes away. We drove there, bought the crib, drove back, opened the box and saw...two baby gates. That's right. We paid for the crib, and received a box filled with two baby gates. ...Back to Target... But, we finally have the furniture and Jamie set both pieces up last night!
In the past week, we also bought some rattan boxes for storing baby supplies, letters to do a cute wall hanging with the baby's name (although now we're going back and forth on what the name will be), and we received the Dr. Seuss wall quote that I ordered on Etsy from Project3Designs. Pictures to come after the nursery has been unveiled to friends and family. Yay!
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