Yesterday was a big day. Yesterday we bought a crib! It was an unbelievable process! We had been crib shopping before. Twice. But it still took us all day on Saturday. We started at Babies R Us, then hit up Buy Buy Baby. In the process, there was a brand of cribs we found in our book that we wanted to check out. The only local dealer was a non-chain store called Lone Star Kids and Babies. Since I am such a fan of the non-chain thing, I wanted to check them out, too. In the end, we decided on one at BRU. It was a highly-rated crib with really good quality scores and a good price. As a bonus, it looks good and is the closest match to the dresser we already have.
Now to get a mattress. We'll probably get something organic, natural and all that good stuff. No off gassing for our little Acorn! And we need to read about bedding. There is some CUTE stuff out there. I wonder how much I want gender-specific bedding, or if I just want something basic and easy to clean. We shall see....
This Lone Star Kids and Babies store was funny. I know that most of my loyal readers are not local to the DFW area, so it's not like you'll ever shop there. But I still need to tell you about it. First of all, it felt like a furniture store. An upscale furniture store, at that. There weren't just cribs with bedding set up like in BRU, or even cribs set up with the matching furniture and bedding / matching decor like at BBB. No, this was like mini-nurseries with ALL of the coordinating pieces, including picture frames, paintings, lamps, etc. And the cribs were organized by brand, and designated by flags / signs hanging from the ceiling. We knew immediately that this place was a bit out of our price range. But, regardless, we wanted to see these Cadillac of cribs.
They were not where they were supposed to be based on the signage. So we asked. The lady we asked was just SO excited that we asked about them. I think she instantly viewed us as giant dollar signs. She then asked us how we heard about the brand, even though we had our Baby Bargains book in our hand and it's listed in there. So we showed her our book, and wondered why she asked us such a strange question. They were rearranging, so she brought us one set. Now, we only cared about the cribs, but it was very important to her to show us the dresser, armoire (like my baby is getting one of those - I just got one last January!) and other stuff. She told us where the other two sets were, and said we can look at the catalog to see the other models.
We didn't like the look of any of the sets at the store. One was very modern and weird, and they were all too furniture-y, if that makes sense. But we grabbed a catalog anyway. We *hated* the catalog. Some of the furniture was nice-looking. But the catalog was just so pretentious it hurt. It had rooms 'suitable for your young prince' and 'fit for you queen'. It was laughable.
Eventually another guy started talking to us. His first question to us was how we heard of the brand. Like it's some sort of secret? Come on, it's in the book! The original lady came back and went on about how they are the only dealer in the area because the company only deals with reputable stores who they think could do their product justice. Then the guy starts telling Hubby-poo all about how the furniture is made, from the dove-tailing to the differences between the ball joints and gliders and whatnot. He didn't look at me even once, even when I made comments. The sales lady chimed in with a 'can you tell you're talking to an engineer?' and he then mentioned that his background was in engineering. I am still kicking myself for not saying anything. I mean, holy sexism! Just because I'm a woman I don't care about how the furniture was made? I can't understand big words like 'dove tail'? I wanted to point out that I am the engineer in the couple, so maybe he should talk to me. I wanted to follow it up with the fact that I actually AM an engineer, and not a furniture sales-person. But I kept my mouth shut. I wish I hadn't.
Anyway, we won't be going back to that store, despite the good scores the book gave it. That level of pretentiousness just wasn't working for us. It's SO not our speed. Be helpful (like at BBB) or give us space to figure things out (like at BRU), but don't hang all over us and tell us how great your store is and ask us how we heard of such a fancy brand.
OOF, I got a bit off topic there. The point is, we have a crib for our girl! YAY!!
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3 comments:
I was really hoping to read about how you reamed out the salespeople. Too bad.
Not sure how you're doing with the car seat situation, but I meant to suggest that you look at some of the travel system. They typically come with a carrier, car base, and stroller. We bought a second car base so that it could be user in either car. Unfortunately now that we've had to switch to a regular car seat I miss that option - have to move cars more frequently.
We may actually be in the market for a crib as well. If you have any suggestions from your research let me know.
So far all I know about cribs are, when someone tells you that you can have their crib because they are done having babies, don't assume they mean done done. Also, when someone tells you, you can have a crib from a particular baby, don't assume that baby was the first baby to use it (the hand-me-down crib we got for Emily is apparently significantly older than we were initial told and you can tell.)
So anyway, am I the first person to ask you for advice? I hope so.
Amanda - it is high time you bought a new crib! We went with the Babi Italia brand at Babies R Us. I don't recall the specific model right now, but the whole line is considered good. We went with a solid rubberwood with some amount of veneers and MDF (hard to get around unless you want to spend over $1000). It got an A- in the Baby Bargains book. That was good enough for us.
They are pretty liberal with the coupons, they give us new ones every time we buy something. So you might consider buying something small first to get a coupon book and then snagging a 20% off coupon. Oh, our crib was on the order of $320 before the coupon.
I hope that helps.
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