Birthdays, Bodysuits, Bibs, and Baby Registries

Today is Tim's birthday! This tends to be a low-key annual event, as evidenced this year by the fact that I'm at work. But there might just need to be a pumpkin pie tonight or tomorrow - one of his favorite desserts. I just wish there were more I could do to tell my wonderful husband just how terrific he is.

Now that we know that Speck is a girl, we've started to work on our baby registries. So far, we're registered at Target.com and BabiesRUs.com - both registries can be found under either of our names. These are works in progress, and reflect a few oddities about our situation:

- We won't even attempt to decorate Pauline's room here in Berlin, since we'll be moving about 3 months after she's born. Every baby website I've visited suggests that this makes us unfit parents right out of the gate, but we can't see how it makes sense to invest the time, money, and effort into setting up a nursery when she'll still be tiny when we leave. Besides, it lets us save our nesting energies for things like organizing our household effects for packout. And we don't really think our 3-month-old daughter will feel unloved just because her bassinet is in a room without pastel paint on the walls.

- We have no idea where we'll be living in the Washington area, so major items like rocking chairs, crib, etc. will have to wait until we know how large her room will be, and how much storage space we'll have in our house/apartment. Same thing for safety gates and other equipment - until we know what the layout of the house is, we can't buy these things. Happily, we get some wiggle room from the fact that by the time we're moved in and settled, Pauline will only be 4 or 5 months old, and not all that mobile (yet!)

- We are also trying to keep our baby gear, including larger toys, furniture that's nice but not strictly necessary (e.g. changing tables), etc. to a minimum, because we'll only be in Washington for a few years before we have to pack up and move all over again. And there are limits on how much stuff the State Department is willing to ship around the world for us.

- We're new at this! We have absolutely no idea how many onesies, socks, outfits, sleepers, receiving blankets, etc. we'll really need. So we haven't registered for much clothing or toys. We put a few things up just to give examples; otherwise we trust to the taste and experience of those who might be shopping, and hope to get some things to cover us for various sizes/ages. (We also have no idea how many diapers we'll need, but feel safe in assuming the answer to that question is "LOTS!")

- Because some online merchants (Target can be bad this way) don't like to ship to APO addresses, we've put our "diplomatic pouch" address on some of the websites. Our APO address is the best one, but if you can't ship something there, you can also send to the Dulles, VA address which you should find online. I've found that for clothes and small things, it doesn't matter much one way or the other, but for larger items, you may need to use the Dulles, VA address.

And most important of all: We'd be delighted to help the environment and your closet/attic/storage space by using hand-me-down items! We love the idea of getting good use out of things like clothes, which is hard for babies to do on their own.