It's Saturday, right?

I'm awake from the early morning feeding and everyone else is asleep. I don't even have a cat to keep me company. (Ah, here comes my fluffernutter. Okay!)

Let's see; what news on a baby front? We weren't going to get a stroller and just carry the boychik around in a carrier, but I discovered at the mall this week that there are limitations to that method. One is my aching back. Two is the fact that I couldn't try on any clothes when shopping by myself without putting the baby down on the floor of the dressing rooms, which was a little too gross for me yet. So we did stroller shopping this week.

Shopping for strollers is confounding. I was so glad to have read The Paradox of Choice while our friends Mr. and Mrs. Bump were out here. Mr. B let me snag his copy when he was off cooking for us; talk about a good deal. Anyway, part of what Schwartz talks about is how choices across the entire spectrum have proliferated over the past few decades, leading to the expectation that there is a perfect choice out there to meet every single one of your needs, leading to you being crazy while trying to make a choice and unsatisfied once you do.

Boy howdy should Barry Schwartz go shopping for baby strollers. There are six different types of strollers, dozens of manufacturers, then hundreds of models. My bible on baby products admits that most people have two (or more!) strollers. Heck, even my baby product bible is still short-sighted enough to only be dealing with a good stroller choice for a baby, not a good stroller choice for the whole baby-through-toddler year, so I should be shopping for a stroller again in a year or so.

Anyway, I ordered this stroller from a place online. It's a lightweight umbrella stroller which should work for our lifestyle. It's more expensive than a $20 throwaway model but it should last until he's 55 pounds, at which point I would hope Master A would be hauling his own butt around. This model has adjustable height handles, a bonus when there's a foot's height difference between Mommy and Daddy. And yes, for those of you steeped in baby product brand names, this is a more hoity-toity brand than say, Graco, but we didn't get it because it's what the royals and celebrities are using (besides, they've all moved on to the Bugaboo Frog). The main drawback to the Mac was that there is no napper bar. For those of you not familiar with strollers, a napper bar is the waist-height tray in front of the baby. It commonly has toys, cupholders, or even snack trays attached to it. It's not a bad thing for Master A to not be able to munch on the go.

Wow, everyone's really sleeping! The other excitement is that I took A to have his picture taken yesterday. That was bizarre. I was curious about how they would get babies to smile since A stops smiling every time I take out the camera. The camera is fixed in position and has a trigger button on a line. The photographer puts the baby in position in front of the camera, then gets right up in the baby's face, blocking the baby's view of the camera. The photographer then makes ridiculous noises, faces, etc., to get the baby to smile. A was more than a little confused and concerned by the photographer talking gibberish. C and I usually just ask him if he can smile while grinning like madmen. Once the baby smiles, the photographer hits the deck and pushes the trigger. Between hitting the deck and the flash, A was confused enough about why the photographer was leaving when they were just getting along so well that we just got little smiles out of him. But he's a cutie.

Our pictures are fine, although I discovered that I was the wrong person to pick out pictures. I found all the pictures adorable and as such I had a hard time saying no to anything that wasn't just a not-great picture of him. So I bought more than I should have for our picture needs, even though I had a list of how many pictures we would need to guide me in my decision-making process. Next time I'll have to be more ruthless (or take someone along with me for editing and counsel).

My only plan for this weekend was to sleep in and that's not panned out. Maybe tomorrow.