Prepping for the Baby

(This post is late, as Ellie is already here, but I have some time in the evenings to catch up on blog posts that I didn’t write when I was cooking vats and vats and vats of red sauce so that we would have food to balance on top of Ellie over the next few weeks.)

Anyway, one of the things that we needed to do was get some of the baby gear out of storage and make sure that it was all ready to go.  Make sure, for example, that all the cat hair had been properly removed.

You see that this is a valid concern. 

Anyway, Margaret was very interested in the preparations, and was quite helpful.*

I had explained that the carseat went in the car, and we took the base outside, switched Margaret’s seat to the other side (because otherwise, no one will be able to fit inside the car to drive it, which makes cars less useful than one might imagine), and fitted it in.

But Margaret wanted the seat in the car, because as she explained, “seat fit a car.”

So I took it out, snapped it into the base, and we went to run errands.

But first, Margaret felt that a seat that had straps and buckles NEEDED something in it because otherwise, what’s the point of having a seat in the car?**

And that’s how this happened.

So Margaret, even though she feels pretty secure in her own position vis-à-vis Leo and I, may feel that Ellie is displacing her penguin.  And that’s the sort of thing that I think she’s just going to have to put up with.

*In order for this sentence to be truthful, we have to employ a somewhat specialized definition of helpful, which involves poking and prodding and misusing all the equipment, as well as sitting in all the things that could be sat in and sometimes trying to lift them up and put them on her head.  You know, that kind of help.  As I believe, however, that it is very important to give credit where credit is due, I need to point out that Margaret was very good at helping test that the buckles are still in working order.  As far as her product testing goes, she can report that they all do up, but undoing them requires assistance.

**This is a very fair point, and one that I considered making to her when she demanded that we put the seat in the car even though we had, as yet, no baby to stick in it.