Baby Gear

Carrie went with an expectant triplet Mom to Baby's 'R' Us on Saturday. My fellow triplet Dad Ryan said today, "They should have tissues at the entrance to that place. That way all the scared parents can wipe away their tears as they look at the ridiculous expensive crap you don't need." I wasn't allowed to go along on the trip with the expectant Mom. Why? Good common sense on Carrie's part for one. Second, I would have been a very bad influence on the proceedings telling her exactly why she didn't need a baby air purifier for $129.99. This is a message to Keith and Stephanie who are expecting triplets or to anyone who is:

Do not worry. You don't need half the crap people say you need. Baby stuff is everywhere for free. We haven't purchased hardly anything. Swings, clothes, bibs, towels, tubs, rattles, bottles, you name it. Don't let this stuff scare you. Tons of it got passed down to us, and we will pass it on. There is no need to spend good money on stuff they will use twice.

Back to Baby Stuff:

There are plenty of things that I have to complain about as far as baby stuff is concerned. The first thing is the baby monitor. Now, there are plenty of houses where a baby monitor is required. Ours doesn't happen to be one of them. The baby room is nine steps from our bed to their door. How do I know this? I just counted. However, we do have a baby monitor. Why? Cause if you don't have one you are a bad parent or something. I can tell you one thing, we can hear the boys scream without the monitor. It's easy. The monitor simply amplifies the sound. It actually gives you some sort of weird delay on the screams. You get it from the monitor, and from the actual baby at the same time. Why am I mad about the baby monitor? Well, the thing totally screwed me over the other night. Here's what happened.

I fed the boys at their 10:00 p.m. feeding and took the monitor to bed with me placing it on the nightstand on my side of the bed. Now, the thing beeps when one of two things are happening. It beeps if the temperature rises above 79 degrees, and it beeps when the battery is going dead. For some reason, the battery life on ours is getting less and less. Before, you could get a good six hours out of a charge. Now, it's like two hours. Anyway, I'm a deep sleeper. I spent a lot of years on the road with a huge party going on around me and I found a way to sleep through anything. Anyway, the battery was going dead on the baby monitor and it was beeping. Carrie wakes me up and tells me about it. I look over and hear the thing beep. In my sleep addled mind, I thought, "Hey, you better charge it up. If you don't have it in here with you, you are a bad parent." So, I go to put it on the charging base which is in the boys room of course. I open the door and fall over the chair that sits in the room. I crash into the dresser which holds the charger. This of course wakes up all three babies. I place the monitor on the charger, make my way back to bed, and try to go back to sleep. Well, the babies I had awoken were having none of that. I spent the rest of the night trying to get them to go to sleep. The whole night sucked. I basically use the baby monitor to see what temperature it is in the room. The thing is a piece of crap.

The next thing I would like to address is the snap up pajamas that seem to be common place. Snap up pajamas? I mean really. There are like 18 snaps on one of these things. Zip up pajamas are where it's at. Who wants to wake up at three in the morning and have 18 snaps to contend with to change a diaper? I think it's a cruel joke. Furthermore, if you start wrong and snap in the wrong place, you have to start over again. Meanwhile the baby is getting more and more agitated. Babies don't just stick their legs out and allow you to slip their pajamas on with ease. No, they make things difficult by kicking and crying. I completely understand. Do adults have pants with 18-20 snaps on them? No they don't. Half the time when I put their pajamas on, all the snaps don't get snapped, and the bottom of the pajamas is showing a lot of diaper. What if your prom date had 18 to 20 snaps? A teenage boy would go insane.

The next one might get me into trouble, but here it goes. Baby Videos. I happen to think that baby videos are bunk. The boys have several baby videos, and the cinematography on the things is laughable. We have one that looks like a dude with a hand held Sony Video Camera filmed some toys and overdubbed some music. Most of these things just go for big colorful objects. I admit, our boys seem to like them. This is a good way to occupy them for a bit. They stare at the big objects and listen to the music. My theory was that ANY video would work. So, on Saturday, which was my day to be Mr. Mom, I tried a Jeff Beck DVD. For those of you who don't know, Jeff is probably the greatest living guitar player on earth. Anyhow, the boys LOVED the show. Cash was dancing, Cade was smiling, and Zane threw his arms around to keep time with the music. I like the Baby Beethoven DVD. Why? Classical music is awesome and I want our boys to be exposed to it. Some of those other videos are really low rent.

How are the boys? The boys are awesome. We went to the doctor for their four month check-up, and it went very well. The boys all weigh around 14 pounds 10 ounces. They are doing a great job catching up from being born premature. The cool thing is, they are starting to smile and recognize us and each other. Look at this face.

If this is not a reason to get up in the morning, I don't know what is. This is Cash by the way. He is still the biggest weighing in at 14 pounds 13 ounces.

Here we are at the Doctor's Office.



This is Cade and Cash waiting for the Doctor to finish up with Brother Zane.

This is Zane. We found out at the Doctor that Zane may have a hernia that might require surgery. He will see a specialist on November 11th. We are a little worried about him, but if he needs it, this is a minor procedure. However, no one wants their kid to have surgery, but it could be so much worse.


Finally, I have to salute my lovely wife. As I mentioned before, on Saturday I played Mr. Mom. Carrie did some things with friends as well as getting all her hair cut off. I really like it by the way. Anyhow, I did everything on Saturday by myself, or most of it anyway, and it's a job. The boys and I did well on our own, but Carrie does this by herself everyday. I'm lucky to have such a beautiful wife who is a great Mom. Taking care of three babies is extremely difficult. It requires extreme patience and understanding with yourself, your spouse, and the babies. I'm very lucky to have a great person to go through this adventure with.