Feb
19
Well, I guess I must believe somewhere deep down that we actually WILL get a referral and, by extension, bring a child into our family, sometime… because I actually bought something.
I got a message from my dear friend Heather — she of the magnificent Miss Isabella and mom to my adorable little nephew with the cute hat — who told me that she had been perusing the Toys-Backwards-R-Are-Us* flyer and there were some good sales… specifically, on high chairs.
Not just ANY high chairs, mind you. This one had GIRAFFES on it.
Now, people who know me know I have become enamored of the giraffes ever since our baby-making odyssey began, and carried through shopping for our Mystery Baby. So the thought of a high chair with giraffes on it… WELL.
Let’s just say I was EXCITED.
But one of the real bummers of adoption is the RULES. As an adoptive parent you have safety inspections and fire escape plans and bolting bookshelves to walls and whatnot that biological parents don’t have to worry about. So my first thought, whenever I want to get something big — any big baby-related purchases — is “will the social worker find something wrong with this?”
I hate that. It really takes the fun out of shopping.
If it had been my biological child, I’d have bought the giraffe high chair in a heartbeat.
But because we are adopting, I thought about brand names and safety ratings and all that crap. And this giraffe highchair was a brand name I had never heard of before. It was probably completely, 100%, absolutely baby safe and passed any and all safety tests. But I didn’t recognize it. So I decided to pass.
But then I started looking around and found, as serendipity would have it, another high chair — sans giraffe, but a well-known reputable brand name — at the same price as (or just slightly lower than) the giraffe high chair. Cute, but bland, and with the same features as the giraffe high chair. And a brand name that I felt confident would pass even the stringent safety standards of our social worker.
So I bought it!
We now have, I am somewhat surprised but pleased to say, a high chair on order, to be delivered sometime this week or next. A high chair which will hopefully have a baby sitting in sometime before we retire. Cute, functional, and social-worker-friendly.
But I would have loved the giraffes.
*Lifted unashamedly from Dave Barry. I think.
