Saturday Steal: General Patton Needed Less to Take Europe in WWII

Don't forget to enter the contest! And this post is participating in Camille's Saturday Steals

Our lovely consumerist society will tell you that there are 6000 things you NEED to have before you have a baby. The whole industry capitalizes on mommy guilt, making you feel inferior or that you don't love your baby if you don't purchase ridiculously overpriced accessories. Now, I'm willing to fork over some cash for things that will legitimately make this whole raising a child thing easier. I saved my whole summer incentive check so I can forgo daily craigslist runs and get exactly what I want new and use it for all my future spawn. But my practicality still reigns and I only want to buy new essentials.

One problem.

No one agrees on what pieces are "essential."

Some moms would raise a golden shrine and pay daily homage to the baby swing. Others had children who hated it and thought it a complete waste. Some moms SWEAR by (insert blank). You absolutely have to have it.

Thankfully, I recently watched the documentary Babies. Husband watched about five minutes of it to test out some tv/audio/hidef/blah and was scarred by what the ratings refer to as "maternal nudity." My 8th grade English teaching sister had a girl student say in reference to the movie, "I've never seen so many titties in my life!" which may or may not have had a whole class of 8th grade boys renting it that evening. Anyways, besides showing lots and lots of nursing boobs, it showed the raising of babies in some other less developed countries. The little Nambian baby didn't have a soothie pacifier. The Mongolian baby didn't have Baby Einstein. You don't really need much to have a baby. So I've tried to make that my mantra.

But there is ONE thing you truly need to have a baby. Well besides boobs.

A car seat.

Mostly because they won't let you leave the hospital without one. So we commenced the research. There are as many opinions about the best car seat as the iphone vs droid. The Cadillac of car seats is the Britax. A Cadillac can get you to work just as well as a Kia, but you pay out the nose for all the little nice to have features. Husband feels that anything to make the getting of a baby in and out of the car is worth it. Straps that never tangle? Clips that won't burn the kid in the middle of summer? Sounds awesome, but $230 awesome?

Well my amazing husband found a internet deal (possibly a glitch on the website but it worked :)) and was able to get this, this, and this for $300. If you add up the prices of the two car seats and the stroller, they equal about $630. Score! But it gets better...


Unfortunately, Cadillac car seats are made for Escalade driving soccer moms. Not yuppies in a Honda fit. So we went to the BedBathandBeyond filled with baby stuff, buybuybaby. If that name doesn't scream consumerism, I don't know what does. However, their ease of returns and customer service, and AWESOME goody bag if you decide to secretly register, make it awesome. Well, they accepted our car seat return for store credit, even though I had no receipts because it wasn't purchased there. But since they were going to turn it around and sell it for more than the online shop was going to, I didn't feel bad. I used the credit to get a combo jogger and carseat for $200.

Now to make things even better, buybuybaby also accepts competitor coupons like 20% off any item to BabiesRUs. Which I completely forgot to bring. But that's ok, they said I could bring the coupon and the receipt back and they'd credit it me the money. Which they did the next week without any hesitancy. Their customer service was exceptional. So I then spent the rest of the credit on other baby stuff that was overpriced and wouldn't have bought except that it felt like it was free.
So let's total this up:

Infant car seat, jogging stroller, Britax toddler seat, Britax umbrella stroller, and $60 worth of miscellaneous baby nonessentials all new for $300.

Now if you add in the ridiculous generosity from the baby shower, you can understand why my front room looked like this. Long live consumerism!