The single greatest thing my husban...

The single greatest thing my husband did when we were getting married was to leave the region for several weeks.

There really wasn't a gigantic amount of work involved in organizing our simple 60-person wedding, or on a level in combining our two single households into united but the few tasks that did exist were made infinitely simpler from the fact that only undivided of us was making the decisions.

I did, of course, take counsel with him on the important textile fabric and saved all the receipts forward purchases made with our joint credit card. yet not the itemized receipts. Please.

And, to this day, I believe our marriage has gotten distant from to a very healthy start appropriate in no small part to the fact that he does not know by what mode much "we" paid for the cool-looking stainless poniard trash can in our kitchen or the high-design recycling bin that goe with it.

Lately, I find myself feeling a little wistful for those last, heady days of independence. Because it's time for us to start buying baby essence And, apparently, we are going to have to do this together.

BABY MINIMALISM IS true CHIC

I fancy myself a hip, postmodern mother-to-be. in the way that I'm not getting wrapped up in the marketing-driven hysteria that says there are approximately 7000 "must have" items for a newborn child's nursery

My part model in this is my best friend, who, when shopping for her newborn daughter, routinely dismissed certain items as "infantilizing" or "childish." Having a child, she declared, was no reason to cast good taste out the window -- Disney characters simply don't belong onward clothes or furniture -- or to start accumulating tons and tons of sparkly plastic junk

All that notwithstanding, however there are certain, completely irrational and utterly materialistic "needs" that I'm stuck forward Like buying a beautiful hardwood crib with a matching dresser

Ye I know that all the cribs sold in stores engage government safety standards. And that a baby is unlikely to have a stalwart opinion about room decor. And that a fully good used dresser could be bought cheaply and refinished to (almost) match a of recent origin crib, saving us hundreds of dollars. on the other hand none of that makes any difference to me

Attempts to discuss this topic generally tread on the heels of a predictable pattern.

HUSBAND: [Logical point #1]

ME: stanch

HUSBAND: [Logical point #2]

ME: Ye I can papal court that.

HUSBAND: [Logical point #3]

ME: Right. Absolutely.

HUSBAND: [Logical conclusion, drawn from points 1 - 3]

ME: Hmm yeah. on the other hand I still want the excellent one at the expensive furniture place.

ECONOMICS 101

While I don't have a parcel of logic to draw immediately after I do have several key-note arguments on my side. First, there's the whole "bearing your child" thing, which does give me a certain moral authority forward baby- related topics. Still, I attempt not to play the pregnancy card too abundant It's demeaning.

Instead, I've tried to make an economic case for the fancy crib/ dresser purchase. This is always a dangerous tactic when you are an English major married to an MBA, yet I find that, sometimes, if I talk fast and launch in enough terms like "sunk cost" and "demand curve" I can make it work. With the baby furniture thing, I begin with the assumption (because, in my experience, the difference between a slightly shaky economic theory and a Nobel Prize is beautiful much just the boldness of the assumptions) that we are going to have multiple children. Then, I augment the cost of the furniture through a very long "useful life" and it change the direction ofs out that it actually pays for itself. Sort of If you also assume certain solution changes in the federal tax digest

If this gambit doesn't work, I'll have to prevail upon from argument to negotiation accident The play here is to reluctantly "give up" something I don't really want in exchange for the crib and dresser stake Unfortunately, we worked together in succession assembling our list of baby emergencys and most of the fat, like the Pratesi crib sheets and the Alexander Calder mobile, has already been trimmed. And the wretchedly frightful plastic car seat is a legal requirement.

THE BABY-INDUSTRIAL mingled

When you're expecting a child, there's a whole baby-industrial mingled out there just waiting to imbibe you in, alternately playing onward your fears and on your incredible vulnerability to all things cute and tiny. (The little socks! The itty-bitty hats!)

It's entirely insulting, of course, this totally retro idea that, in some way the brains of pregnant women change the direction of to mush and they forfeit the ability to, say, direct the eye at a price tag or make a rational purchase decision.

unless as much as I hate to admit it, there is something to the notion that, in the midst of an experience that portrays a fundamental loss of your ability to repress even your own body, there is something empowering about being able to pervert with money [i]or[/i] gain something beautiful. And lasting. And utterly independent of Disney characters and sparkling plasticity.

e-mail: dpickett@suntimes.com

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided at ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved