Kid Stuff It.

To be sure, I never gave much thought to kid stuff before we were expecting a wee babe child.  I mean I knew that there was a lot of stuff involved, but I never cared much to pay attention:  Generally kid stuff seemed to lack any coherent design sense, and all that padding and small-print fabric is well, not my cup of tea.

So one day after Cara and I found out that we were pregnant, but before we could really tell anyone, we were talking about what seemed to be the dire state of kid stuff.  Sitting in our study, I (flippantly, for sure) remarked that, for instance, there aren't any well designed strollers, car seats, high chairs, etc.  I'm not talking functional - sure they all get the job done generally - but well designed in a clear, design-language sense.  The materialist in me generally has chalked this up to the fact that expectant patents are a captive market:  To allay their fears or concerns about patenting, people are encouraged to go buy buy buy their way into being good parents, and there are no shortage of companies willing to sell them myriad goods that they "need" to be good parents.  Like someone with a house on fire who's shopping for a fire extinguisher - parents often don't have the time or energy to focus on buying something they actually want.

Now, we're in no way immune to this - as I said, shortly after we found out the happy news, our conversation too turned to the stuff we're going to "need."  The general aesthetic in our house (and car and bikes) is that we have a strong preference for things that are interesting, well designed, and well made.  (And, of course, used.)  With that in mind, as I whined about not wanting to succumb to the banality of kids stuff, I spun around to the magic internet machine and learned two things:

• There does exist interesting, well-designed kid stuff out there. Really. 
  
• Kid stuff is, generally, far more expensive than we'd realized.  (Yes, this is a recurrent idea here, and will likely continue to be.  All the parenting books warn this, but you just don't understand until you're looking at stuff with a baby growing in your (or in this case, Cara's) belly.

Now the good thing about kid stuff, at least in our book, is that most people only need the stuff for a relatively short time.  Which means that the used market it over saturated, so you can find a fair deal on just about anything you want; even very new stuff.  And that's what we prefer to do...  So, we've been doing our research and narrowing our scope for the essentials: Stroller, Car Seat, and High-Chair.  We'll post on each in due turn as we get closer, but rest assured, we already have a litany of CraigsList searches going.