Fist Baby Purchase

First off, a disclaimer:
Kate says that getting an estimate on having a bathroom put in in our basement doesn't constitute nesting. So, that wasn't nesting (she says).
Anyhow, we made our first baby purchase today.
Borders sent out coupons to their E-mail list, and one of them was for $2 off a children's book. So we went to Borders and looked at children's books.
Both of us gravitate towards the books that we remember from when we were kids. For me that's Richard Scary's books with Huckle the cat and the worm with the alpine hat (I'm pretty sure that the worm had a name, but I can't remember what it was). For Kate it was Puff the Magic Dragon, which surprised me because it was published in 2007, according to the computer in Borders. And the store doesn't stock it because it didn't sell very well. Clearly there's not a good TV tie-in for Puff the Magic Dragon (I think there's a good tie-in for a Harold and Kumar movie, but that's a whole other discussion). I really want to avoid the whole TV tie-in thing. I'm not certain how realistic that is, but it's a goal. Charlie Brown doesn't count, by the way. I think my cut-off for that is that if it was a book first, then a TV show or movie, I'm okay with it. If it's a TV show that became a series of books, not so much. I do want to try to get ahold of a copy of Where the Wild Things Are before the movie version of the book comes out.
I've heard the complaint that making a movie or video game out of a classic children's novel does a disservice to all the kids from there on who will be much more likely to see the movie than read the book. There's probably some sense to that, but books that were illustrated by the original author have to be a different category, I'd think. The issue (from what I've read) is that now that everyone can see Peter Jackson's images of the Lord of the Rings books, they don't get to imagine their own. Okay, but Maurice Sendak showed us what the Wild Things and Max look like in the original. I'd still like to get the book while it still has his drawings rather than images from the film.
We didn't get that though.
We ended up getting the book we traditionally give as a first gift for friends when they announce that they're pregnant; Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. I first encountered that book in elementary school, and it's probably one of the main contributing factors to my growing up to get degrees in creative writing and literature. We got the 25th anniversary edition, which has a CD of the author reading ten or so of the poems. If, by the way, you are unfamiliar with this book, go get it. Now. It's genius, beautiful use of language, and as I recall, wonderfully subversive.
Kate's parents came to visit today, for lunch. They want to get the baby a stroller, so they've been looking at strollers. Kate and I walked through the stroller aisle at Target a few weeks ago, but that's about the extent of the research that we've done. Bill (Kate's dad) was referring to one particularly high end stroller that he saw as a Hummer. I hope they don't get that one. I've always thought it was pretty silly that there's a car named after a sexual act, I don't know if I can put a baby into a stroller called a Hummer. Even if it's just his name for it.
Then there's the whole which way the baby faces discussion. It's amazing how invested people get in their child rearing philosophies. I've been reading stuff as I come across it, and I've come across several articles that consider this one. I'm sure that the baby facing the world camp has valid arguments, and the baby facing the parent camp has valid arguments. Their arguments kind of get lost in their far more vocal intolerance for the other position. It's like it's not enough to have reasons to have the baby face one way or the other, they also seem to want anyone that faces the baby opposite what they think is correct locked up for child abuse.
I'm looking for a stroller that faces the baby sideways.