As we wait for Vegas, I’ll confess. It’s not just the changing table I coveted. There was one other thing. Not a small thing. An absolutely unattainable, impractical, unaffordable thing. I wanted it so badly (just like the impractical changing table) but given the expense and the, let’s be honest, REALLY unpractical nature, I could not have it.
I wanted a carriage. A buggy. A beautiful perfect canopied stroller with big round white rubber wheels, a fancy foot brake and a stature rivaled by presidents and kings.
There is some history here. Though I was never rolled in one, my sisters both were. Bill Cosby, whose stand-up albums I could recite growing up, has a riotous routine about stealing carriage wheels for soapbox racing. I grew up with a tongue twister about baby buggies. My mother hung prominently in her room a copy of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and though there were no prams in the painting, as a child I was certain that one would be coming around the frame at any minute. I loved Mary Poppins. And I always pictured myself pushing a future babe in a carriage of my own.
So, nostalgia. And given that modern-day buggies are both outrageously expensive and completely impractical, I should have been able to chuck the idea of owning one out the window. But I couldn’t. Even when looking at the sobering prices (anywhere from $800.00 to $3,000 new, with the average hovering at $2000 and $400 used) and considering the limited life span of a shallow, lay flat stroller. Further, life has changed since the glory days of the carriage (and really, even since my mother stayed home with my sisters in the 70s) and I won’t spend days wheeling Vegas around the neighborhood in his cushy paradise. Sorry, kid. Perhaps if I had a nanny. Perhaps if I stayed at home. But the sad reality is, without a full house staff, no person in my family is going to be cavorting through town in a pram. No $800.00 baby carriage for me.
We could stop there, but this story is going somewhere. A dark somewhere. Stay tuned.
Filed under: Third Trimester | Tagged: are you there baby? it's me mama., babies like links right?, chick pics, M/D |
Counting Chickens 
I’m tuned. 🙂
And, fwiw, we so very wanted one, as well.
(we compromised by managing to snag a stroller we really wanted on clearance; while it’s not one of the super duper expensive ones that come with a bassinet, it lays totally flat and the foot bit comes up to mimic one, so when she was a tiny baby, it was like pushing a pram. Minus the opulence.)
we wanted one…. (we got one…)
Tuned in! We have an Uppababy Vista, purchased well before we were TTC by my oh-so-excited-for-grandchildren mother. It has a pram/bassinet, and a stroller seat. Hopefully, I love the pram bit as much as I think I will – prams were some of my favorite sights on our trip to Denmark a few years ago, they are all over Copenhagen!
I’m tuned.
I always kind of wanted a pram, but I had no idea how expensive they were. I don’t want one that badly. I’d rather be able to afford some of my unpaid family leave time when the baby is born, instead.
Oh I love those strollers but for those prices… maybe not.
i want one terribly….but the thought of breaking down and taking out a carriage in and out of a car so many times a day kind of scares me.
(it’s bad enough with a regular stroller…heck, even with an umbrella stroller!)
i am hoping the lack of posting is because you are busy becoming a mom! Good Luck! We want pictures!