Poppy Adventures: The Curse of the $1,000 Stroller

that's Matt's PBR in the cup-holder, I promise

When I was compiling my baby registries at Babies'R'Us and BuyBuyBaby with the help of a well seasoned mother of four, we made many practical selections. She told me not to register for toys or for clothes, people would be giving me those of their own volition anyway. Instead, I was to register for the essentials: the breast pump (I ended up buying the Medela Freestyle myself, and its power abilities slid downhill within two weeks), the bottles, the diapers, the diaper genie, etc.. Soon enough during our tour of big box retail came question of the car seat and the stroller. Now, I must mention again that my friend is (for the most part) a practical shopper in this realm...no frills, no nonsense. So that is why she had me register for the stroller that you also use as your car seat; Graco was the make of it I believe. The idea is that you lift your sleeping or otherwise content baby out of your car while she remains in the car seat. You then place the car seat (the base remains installed in your car) into the stroller. I remember thinking that I didn't want to do that lifting bit (I didn't want to do it in my current state of buoyant pregnancy, nor did I foresee wanting to do it postpartum). Yet I agreed to the practical nature of the rest of it. So I reluctantly scanned this arduous stroller/car seat combo with my registry scanner gun.

the Graco SnugRider that you put your car seat into

this is the kind of car seat that detaches from its base to go into the SnugRider mentioned above

Then I saw the Bugaboo. I must be honest here, the first time that I saw the Bugaboo was on Bethenny Frankel's tedious reality show entitled Bethenny Ever After, or Bethenny Getting Married, or something like that. I originally began watching the show because she was pregnant and a girlfriend told me that I might get some useful insight on pregnancy and babies if I watched it. I then discovered that if you watch these reality shows (or maybe it's just Bethenny Frankel's) that you actually end up seeing each episode like 7 times. Even if you are watching it on iTunes they show so many recaps and foreshadowing clips that you end up accidentally memorizing the bulk of the dialogue. Thus I can only hope that I will have the strength to resist the temptation of reality TV in the future.

The second time I came across this stroller was in Neiman Marcus' baby section. The thing that I loved most about the Bugaboo stroller was the lovely (and relatively reasonably priced) Missoni accoutrement. Disclaimer: I realize that spending nearly $1,000 on a chic stroller is never less appropriate than when one is expecting their first child. The child will doubtlessly bring on a host of other expenses, some foreseen and others unexpected. That is why I suggest to you future mothers that if you want the cool mom stroller, you should register for it. You can do so on Babies'R'Us as well as BuyBuyBaby. Subsequently, I suggest that you drop hints of your need for this eccentric item to either your parents or your in-laws. It's likely that they may be feeling particularly spendy when it comes to their grandchildren, especially if this is their first grandchild. If your relatives need further justification, you can simply blame your materialism on the pregnancy hormones.