Pimp My Ride

Earlier in this blog, I touched on transportation, namely, my lack of it. To resolve our "Bringing Home Baby" issue, my wife and I wisely decided to rent a car for one week. That got us to the and from the hospital, back to the hospital for various jaundice-related reasons, to the pediatrician and the grocery store.

Our life as non-car-having semi-urban hipsters ended yesterday. Buying a car, in retrospect, was one of those things we should have done months ago. With the money we spent on rentals or Zipcars in the past 12 weeks, we could have easily made monthly payments for a while. Money was never the issue, honestly, it was equal parts research, laziness, and misguided hope that we could easily manage without a car. There's no doubt we could have survived without a car, but whether it would have been easy is another story. Any lingering thoughts of staying carless evaporated during our midnight ride to the emergency room (everything was, ultimately, fine - that was the turning point in our battle against jaundice).

Our first thought was to check out Hondas - they are relatively safe, reliable, and a used one can run for years. But the local Honda dealership had something better. Something that is undoubtedly safer and just as reliable. Since my wife and I had gone so long without a car, the make, model, or style is not important. What is important is safety, security, and piece-of-mind.

No, friends, we did not join the ranks of the SUVs. Nor did we settle on a sedan, we just may need more space that your typical four-door can offer. My wife and I think of ourselves on the cusp of the next great retro craze. What offers more space than a sedan, better gas mileage than a SUV and the safety of a steel cage?




That's right, we roll in a Volvo station wagon. Big muthafuckin' pimping.

This Blog Is Going To The Beach

Two years ago, my in-laws planned a wonderful vacation for themselves, my wife and I (then dating), and their son and daughter-in-law. The Scandianvian cruise was going to last ten days and pass through countries I had never visited before. Plans were scuttled when my sister-in-law got pregnant.

Last year, my in-laws planned a wonderful vacation for themselves, my wife and I (now married!), and their son and daughter-in-law. The very same Scandinavian cruise was going to last ten days and pass through countries I have never visited before. My in-laws were the first to know of my wife's pregnancy, in equal parts happiness, joy, and "hope the deposit is refundable."

Who needs intercontinental travel when the beach is just three hours away? We're packing up our things and heading east for a few days of R & R with our in-laws. We'll be without internet for the duration (let alone that we'll also have 80% of this blog's readership under the same roof next week).

See ya Wednesday, tanned, rested, and ready.

Bringing Home Baby

Being the uber-hip, environmentally conscious, city-dwelling DINKs that we are, my wife and I currently do not own a car. Actually, none of the above is true exacept for the last part. You see, when we lived in the heart of Washington, DC, we did own a car. First, we owned an awesome lavender pimpmobile, a hand-me-down from my nonagenarian grandfather. After that novelty wore off, we wised up and bought a more practical Honda Accord. We were paying, in our own apartment building, the same amount for monthly parking that we pay currently for property taxes.

When we moved from Washington, DC to the immediate suburbs, we naturally sold our car. It seems counterintuitive, but my wife and I both worked near a Metro stop (and I eventually changed jobs to somewhere walkable). Not having a car has some drawbacks, like having to plan ahead to buy watermelon or 24-packs of paper towels, but we accumulated a nice monthly savings in the process.

More than a year after we first moved to our current neighborhood, we still do not have a car. And, even with a baby on the way, we don’t have any foreseeable plans to purchase one anytime soon. Now, both my wife and I are fairly logical people. We understand that soon enough we will likely have to get a car for practical purposes, but we don’t have much need for that kind of expense right now.

Which is all well and good, as saving money and being “green” is from time to time, except for one thing: getting Lefty home from the hospital. As a rule, new parents cannot escort a newborn home from the hospital without a properly-installed car seat. I wonder what our hospital’s policy is on even having a car at all?

I recently established that even traveling to the hospital by car is not without its own pitfalls, so let's break down the pros and cons of some of the alternative methods of transportation for getting Lefty home safe and sound.

Metrobus
Pros: Hey, we live on a bus line, the hospital is on a bus line, it costs just $1.35/person, newborns and transfers are free; plenty of other passengers to help watch, hold, or change baby
Cons: Hard to pull "stop requested" cord with hands full of baby; jerky breaks not good for people without fully-fused skulls; keep getting in accidents.

Walking
Pros: Teaches my child the importance of self-reliance and physical fitness at a young age, relatively safe and leisurely, quality bonding time
Cons: Walking five miles? In August? With a newborn? And a wife who just gave birth? No one thinks this is a good idea (though honey, if you are reading this, were we delivering at Suburban, we'd totally be walking home).

The In-Laws
Pros: They will be there, most likely at the hospital, during or around the time of delivery; no cost; Volvos are the safest car known to mankind
Cons: Has a certain "I'll pick you and your date up at the dance precisely at 10 pm" quality that I just can't shake

Taxi
Pros: All the benefits of driving, but with someone else at the wheel
Cons: I'm not going to trust a stranger to hold my baby, let alone drive her around; the complicated DC Taxi Zone fare system does not account for newborns

Renting a Car
Pros: Being induced means know when and for how long to reserve a car; no need to clean up any "oopsies" on the way home.
Cons: All that time, paying for a car, while it sits unused in the parking lot does not sit well with this cheap bastard; Daddy would be driving and, to quote Ben Stone in Knocked Up, "They can honk all they want, but I'm not driving faster than 12 the whole way home."

Though I read them religously, I don't usually solicit comments in this space. Today, I am making an exception. What other methods of transportation have I missed? Should I register for Baby's First Segway? Look into renting a few camels for the day? See if our parking lot can be converted into a makeshift helipad? Or do I just tuck Lefty into the crook of my arm like a football and make a run for it?

Baby Delivered on Highway - Another Victim of Suburban Gridlock

Morning commuters on the Dulles Toll Road got a little surprise yesterday. About 5 lbs, 10 ounces worth, to be exact. Javan Anthony Cruz was born yesterday morning, three and a half weeks early, in an ambulance on the side of the road.

After going into labor around 7:15 am on Tuesday, Michelle Cruz hit the road with her husband Norman to get to the hospital. Since this is the Washington, DC area, and it was during the morning rush hour, the Cruz' proceeded to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the next two hours. The Cruz' called for an ambulance, which did arrive in time to provide Michelle with an alternative to giving birth in the back seat of the family car. Though, if that had been where little Javan had been conceived, it might have been a nice circle-of-life moment in the Cruz household.

Little Javan is happy and healthy, despite being born into gridlock. Fortunately for the Cruz', they qualified for HOV status on the trip home and made it back in record time.

Registration

Know what I didn't enjoy but didn't really matter that much?
Wedding registry.
Know what I don't really enjoy but is very, very important?
Baby registry.

This time last year, my wife and I thought it a fantastic idea to have 12 red wine glasses,12 white wine glasses, and 12 champagne flutes. Unless we throw dinner parties like royalty in the next few years, I'm thinking that we got a bit overzealous with our wedding registry.

At the time, I didn't like registering for wedding gifts because it combines the dull bore of shopping with the soulless void of not actually purchasing anything. I didn't like registering for wedding gifts because sometimes, I don't have an opinion on what water glasses should look like. I know this is difficult for some people to understand. If it is difficult for you to understand, you are a woman.

Building a baby registry is completely different.

Instead of debating what threadcount sheets I should put on my bed until a late-night wine accident renders that gift moot, I now have to consider the crib my baby will sleep in, the car seat she will travel in, and most importantly, the stroller that she will cruise in.

Know why this isn't the right stroller?
Because it's for dogs.

As a semi-urban family, we do not have a car and rely on the DC Metro or our own two feet to get around. This time next year, the safe money is on us having a car, but maybe not in the next six months. So, for us, the stroller will be where our baby is secured most often and is the most important thing we can buy.

And guess what, I'm supposed to be researching strollers right now. And I'm not. If only I could see the look on My Lovely Wife's face tomorrow, as her happiness that I posted for the first time in many days gives way to reading that previous sentence.

Now, there's a chance that I will look at strollers following this post. And I'll likely take some time tomorrow to do it as well, but right now, I'd rather be discussing it than doing it. Researching a stroller - and researching most baby products - is like nothing I've ever done before.

I don't know much about cars, but I can tell you which models are the best buy. I haven't been following the NBA playoffs, but I know enough to keep up a conversation. But what am I looking for in a stroller? Well, I'm not sure. What should I be looking for?

We've both read books and leaned on some friends for support and information, but I remain fairly clueless on what to do. I don't think I've seen the light at the end of the ignorance tunnel so far away since I was in college -- and my daughter will be here in less than a semester.

Guess I better hit the books.

Random Thoughts

I never really knew that people rely on this site for their unborn baby update until my wife and I suddenly left town after I posted our baby's gender.

It was very sad (but not entirely unexpected) news that brought us back to Florida for the second time in two weeks. The news that we are having a girl brought a little bit of joy into a solemn weekend, particularly for my mother, who has been surrounded by men for the past 60 years.

We're both drained from the weekend and the ensuing chaos in the airport during our return flight, but I did have some random thoughts...

On Flying...My girl does not like turbulence. Actually, neither of them do...My Lovely Wife did manage to keep all her food down, but the Little Miss seemed bent on turning Mommy's uterus into a prenatal amusement park when we hit turbulence on our descent...

On Moving...Our planned move has been postponed a week...you'd think that living with just two unpacked plates, bowls, and glasses would be liberating; you'd be wrong.

On Raising a Girl...Before the ultrasound photos had even dried, my wife turned to me and said, "You'll never be able to say 'no' to her, will you?"...I can't say 'no' to my wife, let alone the Little Miss...The caption of the gender post was my response when someone asked if we were having a boy or girl...I have NO idea how to raise a girl, so this is going to be my strategy: give her everything she wants until she turns 18...shit, do I have to pay for a wedding, now, on top of college?...If I'm really going to be a protective father, I'll have to buy a shotgun...

More to come after a good night's sleep in my own bed.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

I'm too young to really remember flying as the grand experience it once was. I'm old enough to remember full meals served, ashtrays built into seats, and movies shown on a single screen in the front of coach, but for most of my life, I fly by Travelocity, not travel agent.

I crossed into another era of air travel on Sunday, one that will linger for a while. I may be too young to remember flying as a grand experience, but I will try to remember when flying used to be an easy experience. Because for the foreseeable future, it's about to get tough.

For about four years, I had a job that required a certain amount of travel. At the time, it was great and even got to be routine: pack hastily the night before, arrange a cab, wake up, get to the airport, buy a magazine, fly, land, check-in, find the bar. I racked up premium status the natural way on one airline, and approached it on several more. Now, I shudder to think about the next time I have to fly.

Heightened security means heightened hassles for all of us, but none moreso than parents of young children. My Lovely Wife and I took off on Friday, when many families were embarking on their Spring Breaks. "Look around," I said as we waiting at the checkpoint. "Not a single parent looks happy to be here." It was true.

As little girls and boys hopped and twirled around their parents legs, their early rise tempered by thoughts of meeting Mickey and Minnie, the assorted mothers and fathers looked on, grimly anticipating the next few hours.

For parents of infants - who were once like me at my old job - flying now means saddling up with diaper bags, food, toys, clothes, and anything else that baby might need in the next few hours. And the hope of preparation is balanced with the fear that the baby might just up and decide to cry for the duration of the flight. Which is what I feared the infant in 21C might do on Sunday, but fortunately, that only lasted about 30 minutes.

Between us, my wife and I had one carry-on bag. It held our flight information, some reading material and two waters. I was upset when she wanted me to carry on the book she had just bought, rather than just carry it on herself. I might want to keep that in mind the next time I fly and it takes me 20 minutes to pass through the security checkpoint.