Sites like The Knot are totally unhelpful, suggesting a range of anywhere from $40-$250./i>

That's pretty good actually.

Somewhere in my lizard brain, a signal goes off that says $50/person (i.e., if you're going as a couple, a gift of $100 in value is appropriate). I have no idea where these numbers come from or whether they fluctuate with inflation.

That sounds high for bridal shower, but about right for wedding.

3: Oh. Yeah. I meant wedding. I've never attended a bridal shower, come to think of it. Lizard brain sensor says: "about half the wedding gift", so, I dunno, $25?

Bridal shower gifts should be about $10-20.

If anything.

And remember, the gifts should be things that a bride might need but not have, and which won't be likely to be on a wedding registry, that is, which aren't things that a young married couple might need but not have.

My best guess is that all of the appropriate gifts are either gags or scurrilities.

Lizard brain sensor says

I think we can let LB speak for herself, no?

Beware people! Becks will save this thread to help her make her guest list.

I was never likely to be invited to a bridal shower anyway.

I was never likely to be invited to a bridal shower anyway.

Yes, I would like that you would be invited to less Ben.

Although, you do coo very nicely when presented with a sugar dish.

Only for you, lowercase will.

What W-lfs-n says in 6.

9: It's amazing how quickly will shifts to seeing someone as a future client. For shame, good sir.

Don't let eekbeat having me on retainer prevent us from being friends, Stanley.

A gift within your lifestyle, after your heart. Standard rule of thumb.

Keep it in the chest cavity.

In certain cases a $10,000 gift certificate for will's services is the only valid gift. As I understand, will does these in insurance form, where you pay and annual amount and the spouse gets the $10,000 divorce whenever they want. The premium is $5000 for the first year and then gradually is reduced.

Shares in a senior tranche of a collateralized debt obligation are a great way of saying to a bride, "I'm pretty sure you and the groom will never default on your promises to each other."

Look to the registry and buy as one can afford, people. They asked for it, they get it. A couple who care greatly about the price tags on display do not care about you.

McPants pwned. There really isn't a right amount -- if you must write a check rather than buy a present, something like "as much as you, with your own personal budget and habits, would spend on a reasonably serious birthday/Christmas present for someon you buy presents for." But you honestly can't get it wrong -- anyone who thinks you undergave, and cares, is not thinking about things properly.

And bridal shower presents are supposed to be weird little household goods, like a nice vegetable peeler. I got my (yes, I admit it) stand mixer at mine, but from my mother, so that doesn't really count.

And bridal shower presents are supposed to be weird little household goods, like a nice vegetable peeler

See? That's even less than $10. $40–250 my eye.

Hey! I didn't get anything at my bridal shower.

My IRL friends suck.

Give a bridle at the bridal shower. Heh.

||

Holy shit, big car bomb in Islamabad. Scary looking pic at NYT.

|>

Oh, yeah. Bridal shower inflation is pernicious and evil. Admittedly, saying what I said is a bit Canute-ish, because the bridal shower inflation has kind of happened already. A neat vegetable peeler is, IMO, right, and was unquestionably right and normal a couple of decades ago, but now will look a little peculiar to most people. But still, something little.

Your 'showers' are creeping over here, you materialistic bastards. I still don't like it when you get the wedding list in with the invitation. Last wedding I went to, we spent about £50.

I still don't like it when you get the wedding list in with the invitation.

Yeah. That's wrong. What you're supposed to do with the registry is register whereever you want, and then not tell anyone other than close family and the bridal party. If someone wants to know what you've registered for, they ask behind the scenes.

Making it easy and efficient for people to buy you stuff is very uncool -- presents are supposed to be delightful surprises, not obligatory.

Yeah but it can be hard to find out where they're registered if you don't know any friends or family, ie if you happen to be their one close friend from some shared niche. I don't mind a little insert saying one or two stores they registered at.

(Although when I've been totally blind, you can usually find them pretty easily by searching the online registeries of Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Target. Or maybe that's just my demographic.)

At that point, you should be able to call them and ask straight-up.

Registry in the invitations really is bogus. (Registering for cool stuff, on the other hand, is excellent. One of Buck's employees got married a couple of years back and I had lots of fun picking bizarro camping equipment off their registry at REI. I know we got them an axe, and I think backpacks for their dogs, or something else canine and psychotic.)

I find the registry or suggestions helpful, aside from the problem that they seem to demand a gift, because they suggest something about the couple's needs and desires. Personally, I'd be a little horrified if I was hosting a tasteful bridal shower with friends and family and half my friends showed up with slutty nighties and expensive dildos. The registry is one way of saying, "Here's some stuff we're interested in." It's much better, of course, if they have a wide range of price options and a few creative inclusions. (One set of friends registered at Target for wine glasses and the usual stuff, but also boxes of their favorite brand of dried noodles and cereal. Very cute.)

What you're supposed to do with the registry is register whereever you want, and then not tell anyone other than close family and the bridal party. If someone wants to know what you've registered for, they ask behind the scenes.

This is my position exactly.

Also, baby registries are particularly helpful, especially since the parents may be very aware of PBA in plastics or whatever. I don't know nothin' about babies or baby products, and I'd definitely fuck that up, given the opportunity.

Also, I find the whole shower concept distasteful.

From my first wedding I remember no gifts that were inappropriately small. One friend gave me a tiny silver ornament, which I thought was silly and sweet. He also hung out late on Sunday and ended up with a truck full of candle holders and paper lamps cause we were taking them down and he liked them.

The best gift was a four-CD mix from my bride's ex-boyfriend. (He also gave us an item of material value; I forget what. Bowls?) A disc of standards, a disc of sexy soul, a disc of spacey grooves, and a disc of folky love songs. It came in handy when our honeymoon was a little stalled out and we arrived at a place that had an in-room CD-DVD player, and I still put it on. Whichever one it is, my fiancee always says, "This is a great mix. Who's it from?" and I mumble.

The most useful big gift (besides the celebration itself, in my in-laws' backyard, which was extravagant though not ostentatious) was a $400 hutch from several of my mom's friends. People also bought us our china, which was pricey. The most beautiful and useful thing-y gift was a set of Vietri and Provencal dishes that remain in heavy rotation, and aren't as fraught as the wedding china.

The best recent gift idea I saw (besides the honeymoon registry) was from a friend who asked his guests to help him assemble a patchwork china set. I sent in a complete setting of my wedding china. Only one of 5 pieces broke.

(Bridal shower. Showering people with baby presents is fine. I've also been very lucky in that the baby showers of people I know tend to be pleasant, co-ed gatherings with homemade Indian food or butternut squash lasagna or the like, and no embarrassing games.)

I mean, I find the whole thing basically distasteful and don't really want it for myself, but there are a lot of acquaintances, and with them I just want to survive the process with minimal effort.

I'm being insane and outdated, and there's no reason anyone should listen to me, but the normal process for buying a present for someone you have a personal relationship with is to think about what they'd like, or ask someone else who knows them well what they think. And so for a wedding, you buy what strikes your fancy, or you call the best man, and say, hey, you got any ideas? And now that you, the giver, have affirmatively stated your intention to buy something for the couple, there's nothing wrong with the best man saying, Yeah, dude, they registered at A&S Auto Parts.

But putting the list in the invitation just feels like saying "You can come to our party, but only if you pony up." The invitation should be an invitation, and the gift is your own, optional, self-motivated idea.

(I realize this is cranky. A kid I was babysitting for clocked me with a copy of Ms Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior once, and it left scars.)

Also, I find the whole shower wedding concept distasteful.

There's something kind of messed up about using a personal relationship for material gain and self-aggrandizement, but we do, unfortunately, live in a culture that expects it, and I gather that even the most humble marrying couples feel pressure from friends and family to do all this--not for themselves, but for their relations.

What about putting the registry on the wedding website? This is de riguer in my circles, and it never occurred to me that it was distasteful.

Also, one of the best wedding presents we got was a set of really sturdy metal measuring spoons. There is nothing handcrafted about them, and I think they cost all of ten or fifteen dollars, but they are so luxurious and nice compared to the bendy, ill-measuring spoons we had before, and I use them all the time. I'm sure I think to be grateful to the person who got us those more often than to the giver of any other gift.

I gather that even the most humble marrying couples feel pressure from friends and family to do all this--not for themselves, but for their relations.

Jammies and I aren't humble, but we've got no fucking space and I like the things we have, and having a bunch of wedding presents seems like an unwelcome imposition. (I imagine what we'll do is a donate to charity/donate to daycare fund substitute.)

There's something kind of messed up about using a personal relationship for material gain and self-aggrandizement

Yes.

pressure from friends and family to do all this--not for themselves, but for their relations.

Yes. It's weird, but very true.

There's something kind of messed up about using a personal relationship for material gain and self-aggrandizement

It makes the most sense in terms of establishing a household. As for the self-aggrandizement part, I think it's fine that you get to have one party that's all about you on the surface and beneath that is all about the relationships in your life. MY SPECIAL DAY! I am such a bridezilla.

I'm just coming off my sister's wedding, which was in a beautiful post-Labor Day beach setting, with most people trickling into one of four rented houses from Thursday to Saturday. Only 60 people, and I learned enough Japanese to do a toast.

I imagine what we'll do is a donate to charity/donate to daycare fund substitute.

Guess what! A whole bunch of people are going to ignore that and get you very weird, wholly impositiony stuff that you want even less than the things you might be able yourself into choosing for a registry. Humans are bizarre.

Also, I find the whole shower wedding marriage relationship concept distasteful.

42: I'm sending you a large piece of expensive furniture, Heeb. That's teach you.

44: It's a single-person's lament, I guess. Because I'm opposed to the institution of marriage, there's never a day in my life when people will give me crap I need, and it seems odd that we reward traditional relationships so very much, as if the only valuable thing about a person is whether they want to make a public declaration that they're going to try to stay with the same person until they die.

I love MRH's story about how he and his bride-to-be would stop each other from getting all Bridezilla-y by shouting "IT'S MY SPECIAL DAY!" throughout the process.

45: That's probably true.

I often feel like gift customs need a desperate update now that we're no longer in a time of scarcity. Givers who really want to do something meaningful (ie my mom and grandma) end up being self-parodies and driving everyone crazy. Or the over-gifty friends who just constantly are giving everyone gifts.

45 is right. Heebie, you might think about registering for a honeymoon.

Although now I'm thinking that "registering for a honeymoon" mostly means that you let someone take 7% of your haul in exchange for letting your guests feel they are doing something other than giving you cash.

We're going to a gay wedding for a couple who's just raising funds to defeat Prop 8. That will probably be more successful.

"Her wedding day is the happiest day of a girl's life." I never get tired of that one.

40: Doesn't bother me, so long as it's not front and center.

And yes, there is pressure. We didn't register anywhere, out of lack of organization and interest rather than principle, and it annoyed some people in the family.

41: Absolutely. Buck had a job in a two-person company that was sort of randomly run when I met him, and it had peculiar perks, like, the company had a house account at a nice (really quite nice) restaurant across the street and he could eat there at will (and take people) and charge it to the company, and the same deal at Dean and Deluca's in SoHo.

He wasn't terribly abusive with this, but he would have a bad day at work and go charge himself a nice pan to the company. And one of the things he still has from those days is a set of heavy steel measuring spoons that are a pleasure to use. I would never have thought of nice measuring spoons as important, but if these got lost, I'd spend a fair amount to replace them with ones as nice.

48: It's a perfectly fair single person's lament. If you throw yourself a new-apartment shower, AWB, I'll kick down.

The MY SPECIAL DAY! shout is beloved of self-soothing ironists the wedding world over.

If you throw yourself a new-apartment shower, AWB, I'll kick down.

Me too.

I believe that some comedian married herself into get the presents. Unfortunately, she only had one set of people giving. On the other hand, she didn't have to share.

53: Right. Wedding presents made sense when your wedding was supposed to be the time when you set up your first household. Now the whole wedding hullabaloo is mostly just pointless. It's certainly an event that deserves a big-ass party, but not something entirely out of scale with the rest of your life.

An interesting rule of thumb I've heard for wedding gifts is that you should buy a present equivalent to the cost (per plate) for the wedding reception. Practical? Maybe, but it seems fairish.

Maybe, but it seems fairish.

Really? It does not seem fair to me. It seems class-ist.

How about: You should buy a wedding present equal to the cost of, per plate, of your own (hypothetical or real) wedding reception?

Before we got married, my then-fiancee and I thought cash gifts were terrible and tacky, and we would stress about it when we couldn't find anything on a registry we liked. I've always been a terrible gift-selector, but she has a real talent for finding things that people will like, and took pride in it, and we'd sometimes go off-registry for that reason.

After paying for our own wedding, and comparing the way we felt between (a) opening a spontaneous gift into which someone had put genuine thought, and which we were therefore obligated to find a place for in our not-especially-large home, (b) getting something off the registry, and (c) opening an envelope with a check in it, we favor cash gifts wherever culturally acceptable, and registry gifts as a fall-back option. That probably makes us vulgar.

Donations to the charity of someone's choice are nice too -- we suggested charities on our online registry, but not many people seemed to be comfortable doing that, and we were really pleased when someone did.

57, 58: Right, there's something weird about a rule that involves giving richer people (or more pointlessly extravagant people) more money.

61: Isn't that pretty much how everything works? The entire idea of a wedding is to celebrate how "lucky" the couple is by giving them more shit to reward them for being so lucky, usually commensurate with the couple's own wealth and self-sufficiency. People love rewarding happiness, rather than need. It's the American way.

Well, no. The original idea was that this young couple without much stuff were setting up a household, and didn't have any plates or forks or spoons or bibelots or so on, and so they did need stuff then. It's obsolete, but it didn't start out insane.

Holy shit! I don't have any bibelots!!!

You must have some. How does anyone get through years on their own as an adult without a bibelot or two? Knickknacks, at least?

I'm not a bible, I just bibelot.

If I received no bibelots, does that make my wedding invalid?

Stand mixer. Am I the first person to suggest this? What the fuck is wrong with you people?

I just checked Google, and apparently bibelot is a Perl script. Whew. I have lots of Perl scripts, many of them lovingly hand-made by my wife and I together.

I WANT MY UNBIRTHDAY PRESENTS.

I want my MTV.

togolosh, some things are not joked about, and that's one of them. Have you no sense of limits?

Do you like bibelots
Yes I like bibelots
bibelots, bibelots
Ya gotta like bibelots
Do ya like bibelots
Ya gotta like bibelots, bibelots, bibelots
Ya gotta like bibelots
Down in the locker room just we boys
Beating down the locker room with all that noise
Singin' do you like bibelots
Yes I like bibelots
bibelots, bibelots

55: ZOMG. Emerson watches Sex and the City.

My memory was that the etiquette for the wedding was to try to come in around what it was costing the couple to have you at the reception. But as has been said above, give from the heart and people you care about will be happy and people who won't be happy are probably not the people you care about.

One of my bridesmaids asked, and I said "If you really feel you have to get something, just get a cheese slicer or a cutting board or something." I still have and use both. Wedding china, in contrast, such a fucking waste. It got used exactly once in 10 years.

No, no, no, no. It shouldn't have anything to do with the price of food.

No, no, no, no. It shouldn't have anything to do with the price of food.

Agreed: seriously, no.

76 is right. The idea is logical, but pernicious.

"I will take you out to a fabulous dinner when you visit my city" is all right, if you can reasonably expect to make good soon.

We could totally game the system by having expensive-seeming food. Noodles et fromage! sparkling cola of coka!

48: For my wife and I, it was Cameron Diaz in Very Bad Things: "(sniff) this day... is very (sniff) important to me!"

76, 77: If you are one of those people who was invited because the parents of the couple insisted that you had to be invited, and you know this, and you are going not because you have particular affection for the couple but thought, "Hey, party, open bar!" then a gift commensurate with the cost of your attendance seems a thoroughly reasonable rule of thumb.

Further argument, mind you, for weddings to which you invite only the people who mean the most to you. But if you are dad's business partner, make sure you cover the cost of your attendance.

Bridal showers have, indeed, become a pretty pointlessly consumeristic (is that word?) exercise. I'm a big fan of the baby shower, though.

Baby shower's are great. The best have included an element of sharing words of wisdom with the expectant parents. I always give the same mesh baby-feeder thingy, because it was my very favorite life saver once Rory started teething/ eating solid foods.

Our kitchen right now is really aggressively reflecting our taste as socio-economic destiny. On the counter: two plates heaped with arugula; two different kinds of specially mail-ordered gourmet dried beans, soaking; a big batch of beautifully fried tofu; two avocados sliced in half and waiting, cut side down, until it is time to eat them; a glossy farmer's market onion; a bottle of Maker's Mark; a bottle of San Pellegrino; a fuzzy logic rice cooker; and a rice cooker.

The final item there should, of course, be "a stand mixer."

Since foxytail is determined to make this a food thread, and since I know you all really want to know, this is what I had for dinner last night. Freaking fabulous.

I'm cooking a huge pot of chilli on my charcoal smoker. If this is to be a food thread.

I had a hot dog for dinner. Clearly in November I am entitled to two votes.

I'm a terribly predictable force foodward, I'm afraid. But I just couldn't let our caricaturishly liberal elite tableau pass by unshared, and who better than all of you to appreciate it?

Are you cooking the chili on the smoker for the smoke effect, or to take advantage of residual heat, or both?

My hosts are fixing BBQ chicken. It's going to be delicious. Two herbal blends: one for the chicken, one for the hosts.

The most honest answer is probably, "Because I liek to play with the smoker." But also for the smoke effect. I did this once before to take advantage of residual heat, and decided that I really, really like smoky chili.

Oh, man, I can't remember if I told people about this, but I tried grilled pizza on Labor Day at my mother's and it really isn't hard and turns out excellently. I realize this was trendy years ago, but I never tried to do it before.

And my co-op may, under the fearless leadership of President of the Board Buck, be engaging in some small renovations that will allow tenant access to an outdoor patio on which grilling will be possible. In which case I'm going to be out there in goddamit January. I love urban living, but I also love fire.

Do you throw a pizza stone on the grill? Or how do you keep the crust from sticking?

I have just learned from Alton Brown that you can buy smoked salt.

82, 83: Yeah, the excellent thing about baby showers is there really are lots of good baby products that new parents might not know about. I was evangelizing slings at baby showers (that is, giving them and also talking them up) for a while, because they worked so wonderfully well for us, and they look kind of affected and silly. I figure having someone say "No, I know it looks like a loony hippie thing, but it really is easier than managing all the buckles and snaps and things, and way easier on your back, and at least some kids love them!"

And now I'm off to a wedding celebration for a farmer friend who comes from money. There will be excellent produce and excellent wine, I predict. I'll report back, likely Becks-style.

Inquiring minds are waiting for an answer to 94.

94: It is really cool. You have a hot fire on one side, nothing on the other, and you're aiming to make a pizza half the width of the grill. You oil the grill and have it reasonably clean, and you have the stretched dough and all the toppings ready on plates.

Put just the dough on the fire side, and give it literally two minutes, and it bakes up fast enough that it doesn't droop or get stuck, and you can flip it to the no-fire side. Then put the toppings on, slap the lid on, and give it five minutes or so, or until the top looks done. And bob's your uncle.

It's really fun.

96: What is wrong with something looking like a hippie thing?

Harrumph.

I saw a woman approaching from the opposite direction at the track today who was carrying a baby in some sling apparatus, walking rather slowly on account of the toddler she had toddling along, and I said to myself: from 50 feet away I like this woman, she is one of my people. We smiled as we passed.

Having the grill reasonably clean would be the obstacle there. Still: worth pondering.

While generally a hippie sympathizer (I truly love compost, and like almost all of the hippies I've ever met), there is a class of hippie-associated stuff I react to by thinking "Why are you doing that the hard way? There's no benefit to it."

A casual comparison of a sling with a Baby Bjorn would tend to make one believe that the BB was more secure and convenient and the sling was some archaism for archaism's sake nonsense. Having tried both, this is false; the sling is straight up more secure, convenient, and comfortable for both parties. So I evangelize to those who share my kneejerk reactions.

101: Not glowingly clean, just no big sticky clumps of burned stuff. Mom's was by no means pristine, and it worked fine.

I'm still intimidated, but I did just buy mozzarella today and I do have half of a massive can of tomato sauce left over from the chili making... May be worth experimenting tomorrow.

Grilling is the way food was meant to be cooked. No part of it is unfun, especially the drinking.

Personally, and I say this recognizing that LB's take is much more correct as etiquette, I think there's nothing wrong with making a registry known in advance because it takes a lot of the fraught 'but what will they think' out of it for people who give a shit about those things. The engineer in me appreciates it as an efficient solution to a problem and the socialite in me appreciates it as leaving me more time to fret over which tie I should wear. I'm not interested in impressing anyone with a gift nor am I interested in being friends with anyone who is impressed with gifts but I recognize it as a social custom to which almost everyone subscribes so anything that gets it taken care of and out of the way is a good thing. I would be curious to know if this is more of a local or regional thing, though, as in my tiny hometown there was definitely a lot of jockeying amongst the cousins for who got the best gift for whom and in environments less bound by blood and long memories it may not be as big of a deal. Also, I would simply rather know that I am getting someone a gift they really want and will use. Perhaps the compromise is to say, by all means do not put the registry information in the invitation but by the same token don't be afraid to ask someone point-blank where they are registered.

That said, I was deeply impressed when two friends recently put on the invitation itself that they had found in the process of combining their homes that they don't lack much of anything and preferred no gifts at all. A fellow attendee confided she had no idea what to get them in light of that statement and I said, "Seriously, it said no gifts on the invitation. No gifts. They get what they ask for."

My family is increasingly doing this for gift-giving holidays and my sister and I have both pushed hard that the family standard be that we name one thing we actually want and that be that. I am just as touched when my sister goes and buys me exactly the book I want. It really isn't about the book in the first place. In this sense, I start from the same position as LB and Emily Post, I just take the fork in the path that leads me to desire a practical solution to a frivolous game of social expectations spoiling what is supposed to be spontaneous and fun.

some small renovations that will allow tenant access to an outdoor patio on which grilling will be possible. In which case I'm going to be out there in goddamit January. I love urban living, but I also love fire.

Word. The back door to our basement has this little area just outside that's under our deck. I keep our grill there out of the weather and we grill year round. Fire, accept no substitutes.

LB is correct about grilled pizza... it's easy and delicious.

The best practical baby advice/gift we've gotten so far is to keep a stack of waterproof blanket thingies on the changing table so that if a baby leaks, you can just whip the top one off, and the table is still protected. Keen!

My absolute favorite gift ever, yes ever, is the annual CD selection I get from my brothers. I don't tell them what CDs I want, mostly because I don't know. They spend a little time thinking about me and picking out music they think I'll like. Both made me mix CDs last year. I get to think of my brothers every time I listen to them and it makes me feel good every time I realize how well they get my taste. For the rest of the family, Christmas gifts tend to mean making a very specific list and purchasing exaclty what's on the list. It's nice to get things I want, but not nearly as touching that way.

104: The only thing I'd say, from my vast experience of having successfully done this once, is light on the toppings -- think ritzy Italian restaurant pizza, not pizzaria pizza.

I just put my very finest lasagna recipe on the wiki--a layer of green vegetables seasoned with white pepper, a layer of smoked mozz and ricotta seasoned with black pepper, a layer of tomatoes and red peppers seasoned with crushed red pepper, and a non-smoked mozz béchamel with pine nuts on top. Yum. I'm taking it to a faculty potluck tomorrow.

JUST NOT MATHOMS, OKAY? NO MATHOMS!

102: You're doing good work. I compare myself to the alternate-universe me whom his alternate-universe wife did not convince to try a baby sling, and I pity him. Also the alternate-universe daughter who must be getting a lot less sleep.

Aren't they great? Newt was unconscious for so much of his first six months that I was beginning to wonder if I should mention it to the pediatrician. "Um, Dr? He's bright and alert seeming when he's awake, but that's pretty much limited to when he's actually eating. Not all of the time he's eating, he nurses in his sleep some too."

But I figured there wasn't any way to say that without sounding insane, and he woke up once he stopped being carried around all the time. I figure he perceived birth as mostly a change in womb-type: "Hrm. When did everything get all cottony around here?"

The best gifts are those that you obviously want and are too cheap to buy for yourself. My ex-wife and I each gave one another one excellent gift. I have a pair of very pretty cowboy boots and she has an ergonomic Mirra chair.

My in-laws threw an engagement party for my bride and me, and we spent a lot of time afterwards bemoaning the dreadful gifts that her parents' friends had purchased for us. Was this awful? Yes, it was. But get your first offering from peopleplatters.com and your ungrateful snark will burst free from your chest too. (Most of them were just nice things that we couldn't make use of, and we praised those givers who included gift receipts.)

Although, even the pointlessly weird presents stick in your head. A highschool friend of Buck's who couldn't make it to the wedding gave us a random ugly thing. No harm done, and now I remember all the stories about him as they fit together into a body of information, and when he calls I know who he is, because he's the [marginally useful object][made badly out of an unlikely material] guy.

I recently learned the importance of paying heed to baby-shower registries. Friends of ours were really shaken after they threw a shower and got a huge pile of hipster onesies and virtually none of the stuff they had registered for. Sure, it's a bad idea for your child's well-being to depend on gifts from friends and family, but it was a time when abundant help from your community makes a lot more sense than at your wedding, and they were left with a number of big- and medium-ticket items they'd hoped to have help with.

107: nice trick; I don't know why we haven't yet tumbled to it! The other one we just heard about recently was to get one of those yoga-ball thingies. Helps for bouncing the baby.

114: Hey, apparently Shaq loves 'em.

115 is very true. When my now-ex-step-father-in-law gave me a ceramic Andesian cat band for Christmas, I was bemused and nearly chucked it once or twice. But now I miss him, and it has pride of place on my piano. Pan flutin' away.

It's right next to the peopleplatter, actually.

116: so true. We certainly welcome and appreciate the clever non-registry items people gave us, but we're very grateful we got the car seats, f'rinstance. I can't remember what baby/parenting book made this point, but the idea that a couple should be able to set up house and raise a child without any help from anyone is a relatively recent modern (and stupid) invention.

Where are you registered, mrh?

He was trying to be subtle, AWB. He was going to mention that casually two or three comments from now.

121 is very sweet, but 122 means I can't answer without looking like an asshole. Way to go, Kraab.

Is there a link to your registry on your blog? And if not, as the self-appointed arbiter of manners, I say there should be. Discreet, not imposing anything on anyone who isn't looking for it, and yet available to the interested.

It's not assholish, mrh. I would like to know, and you can feel free to email me if you don't want to be public about it. OTOH, I agree with LB that you should be public about it. TWINS, man. Twins. We, your internet friends, suspect you'll need tons of cool shit for twin-wrangling.

If you don't put "tranquilizer gun" on your gift registry, then we'll know you're not serious about being a parent of twins.

Aw, you guys are too nice. (And I'm just kidding, Sir Kraab.)

There are two discreet registry links on our baby blog, sparveys.com.

127: Two registry links? TWO???

So gauche.

Too little, too late, mrh. You can kiss that monogrammed cover for your diaper wipe warmer goodbye.

Heh. Nothing like officiously advising someone to do something they've already done. I feel all smug now.

Jesus knows twins.

Man, MRH, your friends better pony up. There's a ton of stuff you still need and those buns are nearly baked.

OK, we've got the twins shower and AWB's singleness shower. Is there a grumpy old man shower?

Not that kind. I'm actually quite clean and bathe daily.

Emerosn, you are a clean old man but you're a mixer.

I sort of think it would be rad to have a tubal ligation shower.

Emerson too.

Man, MRH, your friends better pony up. There's a ton of stuff you still need and those buns are nearly baked.

Huh, here I was thinking, "There's hardly anything left on our registry!" We're actually doing pretty well at this point. One can always use more diapers and sheets and such, but I think we have all of the things we'll need right away. Hooray for friends and family!

The biggest missing piece is a diaper bag. I'm being especially picky trying to decide what the best one is. None of the bags I've seen in in baby stores are up to my (exacting, ludicrous) standards.

AWB, whatever kind of shower you decide to have, I'm in!

137: Seriously, I'd think about improvising with an old backpack or something, and then going shopping when they're a month old. There's not so much good and bad in diaper bags, as what you want and what you don't, and you don't know what you want until you've been doing it for a bit.

I realized there were a bunch of cheap little things on your registry that weren't getting any love, so I bought them all. Now future Sparvey gifters will have to really dedicate themselves.

Your diaper bag has to have enough good padding for a laptop, so you can liveblog the whole process.

liveblog the whole process

"I'm going in. OH GOD THERE'S POOP ON MY LAPTOP."

(AWB, you're a gem!)

Although I have to say, I'd have a hard time buying you "Dr. Brown's Level 1 Nipples." So provocative, these baby items!

So where are you registered for the tubal ligation shower, AWB?

Actually, if I have any kind of shower, it's going to be a Suit Shower. I need to get a wicked-cool suit by December if I'm going to go on the market this year. Mom and Pop are ponying up for my plane ticket, which is sweet, and may contribute to the fund, but I really need a great suit. The old "but this is my wedding gown" line can only go so far during a recession.

142: Do you mean "Dr. Bronner's All-One Full Truth Moral ABC nipples"?

Something that I didn't notice much of on the registry was baby blankets. You need a ridiculous number of them, because they get dirty and you're always using them -- put the baby down on the floor, wrap the baby up like a tiny sausage, keep the baby warm, protect your shoulder from baby drool, and so on.

You should have stacks and stacks -- like, ten or so for each baby. If you don't, you need them. (The hospital will, IME, send you home with a bunch of cheap coarse woven cotton things, like really really heavy sheet material, with ugly stripes on them that are key. They're a really useful weight, and they're so ugly that you have no hesitation about using them to, e.g., intercept vomit.)

I was about to say interviewing would be a far less invasive procedure.

146: interesting -- I don't remember using many blankets at all.

baby blankets

Word. This is one of those pieces of advice that seems to be universal. (Along with the advice to steal as much stuff from the hospital as possible.) A good number of blankets were purchased already, we got some more as hand-me-downs, and we just went a little crazy at Babies R Us. (It's really hard to resist things with cute duckies on them, I find.)

At Gymboree, I'm a total sucker for uncommon baby animals on blankets and stuff---baby owls, baby turtles, baby raccoons. Eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head cute.

Huh. Come to think of it, that was mediated by the fact that Sally spit up constantly, but constantly. After every feeding, and she fed all the time. So my infant-care thought process involved a lot of covering every surface with washable sacrifice-cloths. But even without that, there was a whole lot of swaddling and such going on.

Are "receiving blankets" the thing?

As I understand it, yes.

Yup -- what you want is around a yard square or a little smaller, soft, and machine washable.

I think "receiving blanket" may mean specifically "Square of stretchy cotton knit fabric that size" in baby-store parlance, and some of the ones I liked best were outside of that narrower definition (a little quilt a neighbor of my mother's made, a soft woven blanket with fringe about that size). But the important thing is little washable soft squarish blankets of whatever genre.

uncommon baby animals on blankets and stuff---baby owls, baby turtles, baby raccoons

Oh, yes. My two favorite baby items so far are a set of Carter's onesies with a lion, rhino, and tiger (or something) that says "Safari Friends," and one from Baby Gap that says "Turtle-y Awesome."

Good work, comrades. This diversionary talk about cute little babies allows us to further our sinister plans without rousing the suspicions of the secret police.

Emerosn, you are a clean old man but you're a mixer.

I like that movie.

I thought it was a reference to the horrible "A clean old man" scene from Miss Lonelyhearts. ("If you can't find a woman, find a clean old man," etc.)

A supplemental suggestion to 146: buy a short stack of chinese prefold cloth diapers (easy to Google). I'm not recommending them that you actually use them as diapers, mind you. But they're not expensive, they're not pretty, and they're very useful for putting between baby and items (a) that you want protect from baby fluids, or (b) from which you want to protect baby (say if you're changing in a public space). You'll still need receiving blankets as well, of course.

(If you're interested in using cloth diapers, you should read up on that separately. We tried and failed, but may try again when the kid's older.)

I'm pretty sure it's to A Hard Day's Night. Paul's grandfather.

Last sentence of 159 should be: "If you're interested in using cloth diapers and don't already know more about it than I do," so as to sound less presumptuous.

Reporter: Do you often see your father?
Paul: No, actually we're just close friends.

Yeah, Hard Days Night. One of my favorites.

'

159: I do remember using stacks and stack of those tri-fold cloth diapers -- great for burp cloths, wiping up messes, etc. We did cloth diaper until I went back to work -- alot of soaking, and a fair amount of bleach and hot water. I doubt we did the environment any favors.

We have, at last count, four different cloth diapering systems ready to try, including a whole drawer full of pre-folds. Good to know if they don't work out as diapers they have an alternate use!

(I'm assured that soaking and bleaching aren't necessary, but of course that's all purely theoretical at this point.)

Oh, yeah, another vote for cloth diapers as utility cloths. They filled a slightly different niche from blanket for us, but not totally. (That is, they're great for protecting the environment from the baby. Blankets are better for two-way protection, environment from baby, and baby from environment.)

My parents occasionally reminisce about cloth diapering (I didn't try), and say that the key was the lidded enamel diaper pail -- tossing soiled diapers in there left them bleaching in baby urine, which had them almost clean before you washed them. This sounds bizarre to me, but I mention it for what it's worth.

Ain't no conspirators in here, officer! Just a bunch of moms. We're completely harmless.

I was just looking at the mesh-bag feeder pop thing on your registry, MRH, and that sounds incredibly useful. I had never heard of such a thing, and imagine that whoever invented it spends most of the day patting herself on the back.

I was cloth-diapered and homemade-baby-food fed, in a time when neither of those things was cool and hippies were deprecated. There was usually a Donovan record playing, too, FWIW. And look how I turned out.

This was the hippie branch of the hardshell Baptists? Do I remember you wrongly? Or is it just the insane syncretism of American society?

1979 was a weird time for everyone. Also, that was before being Baptist meant you couldn't listen to secular music or own a nice food mill.

When hippies started getting big into organic food they started running into Adventists and Mormons and other sectarians. Country hippies often turned into rednecks, pretty much.

||

This is completely, completely off topic, but I just happened onto my four year old grandnephew's birthday gift to my sister. He had a whole dollar and looked long and hard until he got an little plastic sandwich box decorated with two grossly stereotyped Disney princesses. His mom said that when he finally found it, he was absolutely sure it was the right thing.

He gave me two large snail shells, and that definitely was the right thing.

|>

169: This is embarrassing, but I hadn't seen those until you pointed them out. I guess my wife's been adding a few things to the list behind my back. Nevertheless, that looks like an awesome, if slightly gross, product.

167: Sounds like we could use organic, free-range baby urine as a cleaning product for the whole house!

174 is delightful, only marred by unnecessary pause-play action.

169, 175: That *is* an awesome product!! It's my universal baby shower present. I was warned not to use it with banana, because that won't come clean. We used it with lots of frozen fruits during teething, to everyone's delight.

In addition to stacks of blankets and cloth diapers, mrh, I recommend lots of bibs. Big ones—the kind like a hand towel with a collar are best; the tiny ones are useless. And really, lots.

A couple of other things: the Baby Björn bouncy chair is great. We also had this bottle holder that's like a small boppy pillow with an elastic loop; it sits on the baby's chest and allows for hands-free feeding.

Also: get someone to circulate a sign-up sheet for your friends to bring you meals, especially for the first couple of weeks. And make sure that people who come to visit and coo at your babies know how to run your washer and dryer.

I might have mentioned that when my son was a baby we had him in a cradle hanging from the ceiling. about 5 feet from the bed. We had a string attached so that we could rock him while we were lying in bed. This was especially nice when he woke up but was just lonely but not really hungry.

the other day my 1.9 yo niece said to her dad 'take money' when they were dressing to go out for a walk, my sister was shocked

19 mo

sorry, 21 mo, i counted and calculated now
so maybe it's not that surprising

175.2: As I understand it, unless the twins are both girls (you don't know, right?) then this will more or less happen on its own during the diapering process.

I gave the grilled pizza a go tonight, and was surprised it was as easy as it was. Oh, I should have left it on a bit longer, and used less cheese, and maybe a low flame on the second side. But all in all, a respectable first attempt and worth further experimentation. Thanks, LB!

180 is funny. Tonight my 22 month-old niece leaned over to my pregnant sister's belly and said "Food -- down! Eat, baby, eat!"

184: Yeah, that was why I was all excited about it upthread. Easy! and fun! and good on the first try, with obvious potential for really really good!

I know this thread is dead, but it's the most appropriate place to post the disclaimer I just got when ordering a wedding gift:

Please note that the charge on your credit card statement will be: The Honeymoon or The Honeymoon Registry, Inc. It may also contain a description such as: bridal registry or travel agency (AMEX). If you have a spouse with whom you share this credit card, please notify him/her of this purchase.