The Thing About Grandmas: Preparing

Welcome to The Grandma Post. Of course, since my very first grandchild will be here this summer, I am all about grandmas and their grands. I hope to entertain y'all with my excitement over Baby M's impending arrival. I also hope you Grandmas out there will share your sage wisdom with me. Here we go---

I nearly began this post with: Once the excitement of the big news finally died down... But, the excitement of the big news, apparently, never dies down. So, after being on a continuous excitement high since Thanksgiving, I began a bit of planning, buying baby clothes and taking Birdie maternity clothes shopping.

I've been busy.

And my bank account is 'paying for it.'

In all honesty, I cannot recall a time that I had more fun shopping!

I was excited to go with Birdie on her first maternity clothes shopping outing a while back. We decided to begin at Tanger Outlet in North Charleston. I thought there was a maternity shop there but, once we arrived, we discovered there was none. No problem, they do have an Old Navy and a Gap and both of those places claim to sell maternity clothing. What our Tanger Outlet DOES have is a gazillion baby/children's' shops. We made ourselves stop after entering and spending in four of them.

Oh, and it does not stop there. Since that first time out, I've been checking out Zulily on a daily basis. I skip past clothes for me. I skip over products for the home. I skip past everything Zulily has to offer and go straight to the maternity and baby links. And goodness me, the book and toy links. Wow. I have gotten some very cute things. Very cute. Very. Cute. And some great reads.

See that little soccer ball? The mommy-to-be is our athlete. She played soccer for about 10 years when she was growing up. The soccer ball is in her honor. 

There's a group called, Books are Fun!, who come and set up a display at school every so often. They've made it possible to increase the size of Baby M's library. The excitement never ends. One nice thing about teaching in an elementary school is you get to be around books that kids really love. You also get to refresh your memory about your own favorite books for kids. Such a win-win situation!

Don't tell the mommy-to-be that I used pink for the text. We're not allowed to do pink for this little girl. :)

Yes, it's a bad picture but it's a Fairy catching system! WHAT?! How much fun wll this be? I got this at the book fair at school. 

There was also that big sale, Charleston Repeats, where we also made several purchases. Here are a couple of mine.

One of the best, nicest, most generous things that have happened is all the hand-me-downs of which we are the most grateful recipients-- two cribs, a toddler bed, the fancy stroller with the detachable car seat, clothes, toys, books...the list goes on. My friends who have been grandmothers for a while now are the BEST!

I've noticed that there are an awful lot of toys designed with the parents in mind over the children for whom said toys are intended. So much and so busy and I am convinced that all of this busy-ness and psychedelic colors cause over stimulation and that this over stimulation has something to do with all these diagnoses of ADHD. But that's just me. It does keep me cautious about what I do purchase for Baby M. And that's my soapbox for today.

Did y'all go nuts with your first grand? Please tell me I'm not the first and only grandma-to-be to go crazy!