05/01/2006 - Keeping up with the Jones - Baby Strollers − 1 May, 2006

We went stroller shopping this weekend. With all this new territory we're trekking through, I can't help but feel a little ill-prepared. I am constantly wondering what Drew and Michelle are doing since they are due in about a month. Take for instance strollers.

I've been laboring over our stroller choice for about a month. There are two schools of thought when it comes to strollers these days: 1. Buy a travel system that includes a stroller and a car carrier (which snaps onto the stroller when not in the car) or 2. Buy the car carrier and stroller separately. Option 2 tends to be significantly more expensive than the first option. So I got to wondering what is better about getting separate pieces. Will I need them to be separate? Which option is better in the long run? I got so bad that I couldn't stand to even think about it. I would freak out in the stroller isle at Target and run away.

We ended up at Babies 'R' Us on a whim Friday night. We started shopping for strollers seriously that night. We started poking and prodding them, collapsing them, carrying them, etc...just to make sure we knew what they would feel like. Another couple had shown up and was doing the same thing. Unlike us though, they seemed pretty obsessed with a single kind, the Metrolite by Graco. After I noticed the depthness of their prodding I started to wonder what was so great about the Metrolite. Court started watching their research too. Soon, we were wondering if we should be looking at the Metrolite. Curious, we waited for them to finish with it so we could take a look.

A half hour passed and the couple continued to poke at the Metrolite. We grew tired of waiting and moved on to the furniture department. We walked the rest of the store looking at all the other fun stuff we needed. I kept an eye on them, though. I really wanted to look at the stroller.

Finally fed up waiting for them, Court and I trudged back over. By now the couple had 3 other strollers out and were poking at all of them. They had everything from your run-of-the-mill stroller up to the Rolls Royces out, running around the isles. While they weren't looking Court test-drove the Metrolite. We decided it was exactly what we wanted. It was light, all-in-one, and snappy-lookin' to boot. We grabbed it and ran...well, we grabbed one of the boxes and ran.

I couldn't help but feel like I hadn't done enough research. We had looked at them before, done some price comparison shopping, did our online research, yet we were not spending hours making sure it was perfect. Was I being a good parent? Was I being as good as them? I don't know.

On Saturday we were over at my parents house for Michelle's baby shower. Drew and Michelle had received the same stroller, just in another color, that we had purchased on Friday. I was relieved. If it's good enough for their kid, it's good enough for ours.