I can’t believe I am up writing this at 9 a.m. since I was up until 2, but I guess that’s the fun of pregnancy… lack of sleep and then around 3 this afternoon I will crash and burn!  Fun!

Anyway, I was only awake because we had a slight incident in our house — the dog had a bad dream.  

For all of you who do not have dogs or pets who you think of as children, you completely will not understand where I am coming from, but for those of you who do feel this way about your four-legged kids, you will know that when something is wrong, it can be harder to figure out than a screaming baby!

I was just about asleep when Comet started walking around our bed.  This is very unusual as he mostly lays his head down on my pillow and I don’t hear from him again until Kevin’s alarm goes off, where he usually snorts in annoyance that Kev has to get out of the bed.  He walked to the end of the bed and laid down for a few minutes and then jumped off the bed to get some water.  Since I could hear him licking the water, I didn’t bother to look at what he was doing, I just figured he was thirsty!  When he didn’t get back in the bed after a few minutes I sat up to notice that he was cowering and shaking in the corner!  This is very unlike him!  By the look in his eyes I could tell he was terrified of something!

I picked him up and put him back in the bed and let him lay in my arms until he fell asleep.  This entire thing took about 45 minutes… all while my husband slept peacefully in the bed next to me, not waking up once!  Once I got Comet back to sleep, he slept fine the rest of the night… it was me who tossed and turned (and got up 6 times to go to the bathroom!)

This leads me to my new fear of parenting — will I have the same patience for my child at 2 a.m. that I do for my poor little puppy and will my husband be of ANY help in the middle of the night since he didn’t even HEAR me get up and take care of Comet!  Guess we will find out in the next 5 weeks….

It feels like a rite of passage for first-time moms to finally be able to create that oh-so-special baby registry with *everything* you will possibly need to take care of that little one when he or she arrives.  I know for me, I couldn’t wait to start ours and did practically the day we found out we were having a girl at 21 weeks.

We spent hours in Babies R Us looking at all the wonderful things that we were absolutely going to need.  Friends advised us on exactly what we would need and the store provided a checklist of the top 250 items to register for.  Now, some of these things we knew wouldn’t apply to us, but others… well, we were sold that if everyone said we needed them, we did.

There’s just something about other’s opinions that we take as gold sometimes.  I had never heard of a sheet saver before but clearly we needed to register for at least 3 of them.  And the bottle choices:  forget it.  I had a meltdown, cried in the store and had to go home.  EVERYONE has an opinion on which one is best and why.  After a few days and many many product reviews, I made my own decision.

I think that’s when reality started to set in for me.  I am not going to be this mom that totes around 9 million things in my diaper bag or walks upstairs to the changing table every time the baby needs changed.  No, its not because our awesome pack and play also has a changer in it… I will most likely throw a blanket on the couch or floor and do the changing there.  I don’t need a bottle sterilizer because I have a dishwasher (although I do know the sterilize for the first use).  I don’t need 7 changing pad covers because we have a washer and dryer…  2 sounds about good enough for me.

Sometimes you have to remain true to yourself through it all and remember what you will really use and what will ultimately sit on a shelf and eventually be either given away or re-gifted to some other sucker mom who thinks she needs everything under the sun.  I’m totally not telling anyone to not get tons of changing pad covers or not get a bottle sterilizer if you plan on using it all the time at all!  For me personally, that’s the kind of junk that will just take up room and sit on shelves.  My best advise is to use YOUR judgement on what you need.  

As far as our registry and our shower… well, we got almost everything we need for this little one!  I plan to use the rest of our gift cards for diapers… many, many diapers!