On the go

A lot has been going on lately.

Wife and baby have been doing fine. Last week was March Break and wife was working from early in the morning and on her feet most of the day. Overall it tired her out pretty good and went straight onto the couch as soon as she got home in the afternoon.

Her mom made her a couple new "maternity" shirts. They are very impressive. I was watching her cut the patterns a while back. She did it from memory, cutting up old magazine pages to be used as the guide on the fabric. Amazing.

In other news, I went to test drive a new car in preparation for baby. I like the feel of the drive - I'll post more about it in my regular blog. More baby-specifically, there should be more than enough room for baby gear and seat.

I asked my parents about their thoughts on the bucket vs. convertible seat. Mom mentioned that the bucket was only actually usable for 3-4 months, depending on how fast baby grows. I think this actually makes my decision more difficult. I like the convenience of being able to move baby around as an all-in-one package but I also want to have something that we can use for a longer time.

Beam me up!

I've been doing some research about travel systems, strollers, and convertible car seats. There are a lot of reviews about comfort, fit, style, etc. There are a lot of articles about how to install the seats, convenience factors, safety, performance, size, etc. One thing that is largely missing from the research is how these seats fit into the vehicles. 

There is one site I've found but it is mainly concerned with seats that can fit three across the back. There are individual reviews on whether a seat fits for a particular user with a particular car but there is nothing comprehensive.

There are so many people out there driving babies around in their cars, but we can't get feedback from everyone using every seat available. I know that sometimes a manufacturer will provide a seat to bloggers and reviewers to help test and provide feedback. If there was someone that was willing to uninstall and reinstall seats weekly to test them out, would there be manufacturers willing to give out samples?

I think I would not mind sampling the car seats on a weekly or monthly rotation. Since it's unlikely that someone will make this type of offer to me I will probably scrape Reddit for reviews and put them into a spreadsheet.

I also happen to be looking at purchasing a new car in the next few months. Perhaps someone will give me a car to review instead.

You can actually see it!

It's really quite amazing. I could see my wife's belly move from baby's kicking. She was sitting at work one day and was showing it to me. Amazing. I didn't know babies kick all the time.

I remember an elementary school classmate brought her mom for show and tell once and mentioned that the baby kicks but I had no idea just how often the baby moved. They tricked me a bit. They said that "sometimes" the kick would come. To me sometimes means not very often.

Baby moves around a lot. In agreement with what I've read online, baby tends to be slightly more active in the evening hours. Baby also seems to be more active after my wife drinks juice. I'm guessing baby will have a strong attraction to juice in the later years.

Doctor visit

We finally met our doctor and were surprised that she looks fairly young. After so much Internet research we were also very cautious about many of these doctors. It's unbelievable how many have bad reviews but it could be a sign of this generation of patients.

Overall the visit was good. The medical centre was very modern and kind of resembles a food court. It was nice to hear that wife and little one are both very healthy.

The baby has become more and more active. It's still rare for me to feel a kick but once in a while I do and it's exciting. Luckily the kicks don't hurt wife or I'd be slightly less happy about it.

In a few weeks we'll be back there. Hopefully we'll be able to get a picture that's not blurry.

Sturdy furniture, check!

Over the weekend wife and I went to the local Swedish furniture shop to check out some baby furniture. We bypassed all the rooms that we'd normally check out and imagine we had and bee-lined to the baby section (sadly the baby stuff was at the end of the floor, so we could've used the very first bypass). One area we did linger around were the bunk beds. They are quite nice these days; several bunk beds have built-in study areas which will come in handy as kids grow up.

I remember, back in the day, these self-built furniture was very cheap and often very wobbly. Several kitchen tables and coffee tables were inexpensive but felt like the legs would snap off if we put more than three mugs on it. That day I was testing several of the cribs that they had on display. They were very sturdy and had no discernible wobble. Several other non-crib pieces did wobble but was more likely due to the builder speeding through the process.

Overall I'm quite impressed with the Swedish furniture. For the most part they are not very upscale but last long enough until people save up for better furniture.