Some assembly required

The crib came today.

The box takes up half a wall in the guestroom. It weighs more than 100 pounds. When the UPS truck delivered it, the driver had to ask for TJ's help getting it out of the truck, as it was too big for her handtruck.

We pushed it into the spare room and starred at it in awe.

"We have a crib," TJ said, a little dumbstruck.

"There's no going back now," I responded. "We've got to put a baby in that thing."

After seeing its size and weight, I questioned the wisdom of purchasing the crib before we got moved into our new house. Some poor schmuck is going to have to get that thing into our moving van in a few weeks. But it had to be done. We were gifted funds specifically to purchase a crib. My mother, being full of wisdom, said, "Either buy it now, or let me hold on to the money." She knows me well enough to know that even sitting in savings, those funds would get spent on some other emergency. Yes, we would still have eventually ended up with  a crib, but the spirit of the gift may have been tainted in the process.

So we bought it now. Ordered from Toys R Us after much debate and window shopping. I knew what I wanted: Something convertible with an attached changing table. I once babysat for a friend who had a similar style, and I thought it was marvelous. It puts your baby at perfect, not-back-hurting height for diapers and dressing. It has drawers to hold diapers and other changing paraphernalia, and its own changing pad. Does every baby need a fancy changing table, or for that matter, a crib that will eventually turn into a double bed? No, of course not.

But ours has one anyway.

It has a nicer bed than I do. Which is, of course, how every child shall start life. Eventually the mattress will lower, and the front rail will turn into a toddler bed rail, and Junior will get to pick out dinosaur sheets, or princess sheets, or whatever it wants.

This is its bed. The first (and one of the only) items we've purchased for the Wee Baby Tranchell that will grow with it and remain useable beyond a month.

That is assuming, of course, we can figure out how to get it out of the box and assembled in something like a safe fashion.

The UPS delivery woman gave us her piece of sage wisdom on that subject before leaving: "Whatever you do, make sure you assemble it in whatever room it's going to be in. It does not fit through doorways."