Baby booty

In my continued efforts to be somewhat proactive about this whole baby business, I've been doing a lot of shopping lately. It also helps that I have no desire to go home to an empty house most days, and that there are a few discount stores that I pass on my way home, so let's just consider it killing two birds with one stone and leave it at that. I don't think I've gone too crazy, considering I've purchased 50% of the stuff from local thrift stores, and the other half has come from Marshalls or T. J. Maxx. My mom has been getting in on the action, too, as a devoted thrift store shopper, so it's always fun to see what finds she turns up; my favorite so far is the Steelers onesie that I totally plan on making the baby wear on our trip home from the hospital. Western Pennsylvania, represent!

One thing that has really made itself quite clear is just how gender-divided everything baby-related is from the moment your kid exits your uterus. I get that some people have certain expectations of what a little boy versus a little girl should look like in terms of dress, but how hard would it be to mix things up a bit? About 90% of every boy's outfit that I've picked up has some variation of the following emblazoned upon it; A. Trucks/cars of some sort, B. Dogs/puppies, or C. Some pithy little phrase about being "Daddy's little blank (i.e. helper, slugger, sports star)." And the girls' stuff is no better; it's like the only career aspirations they are expected to have, at least in terms of what their clothing proclaims, is pretty, pretty princess. Ugh. Seriously? So far, I've been favoring things with dinosaurs and bugs on them (which are things I loved when I was a little girl), but I'm beginning to run out of options.

In other news, I have half-heartedly started a baby registry at amazon.com. The whole asking people for gifts thing makes me a bit uncomfortable, but I know that it's hard to resist wanting to buy cute baby stuff. I mean, just look at the pile of stuff on the bed.