RoboBed, BabiesRUs, Stepford DayCare, and the Naming Wars

We got a tour of the birthing ward at the end of birthing class last Thursday.  There's actually no guarantee that we'll get a room in the birthing ward, it depends on availability when Kate goes into labor, but it was a nice room.  It has RoboBed right in the center for Kate and a sort of fold out sofa thingy for me off in the corner.  RoboBed is this all purpose birthing bed that folds and spindles into various configurations in order to facilitate labor.  Evidently, once the baby's born RoboBed becomes an actual bed that might be comfortable to recover in.  The birthing ward is very thoroughly thought out, right down to lock-down alarms on all the exits and elevators that are keyed to a wristband that they have on baby.  If he tries to bolt in the first twenty four hours the place alarms and locks up when he makes it as far as the elevators.
The only other thing that I'm going to mention about birthing class that the latest round of instructional DVDs did teach us something...
It taught us that our initial feeling that we don't want any video recording technology anywhere near the labor and birthing was right on.  There will be none of that.
As an aside, do you remember the recurring "Lowered Expectations" Dating Service bit from Saturday Night Live a few years ago?  The astoundingly unattractive people in the little opening montage went on in their careers to star in birth class videos.
One of guys that plays in my regular Friday night hockey game is expecting his second child on the same due date as ours.  In the locker room last Friday night he observed that birthing class videos would be an excellent birth control strategy for high school kids.  I think he's onto something.
Certainly they'd do better than abstinence education.

We toured a daycare facility Friday morning.  This was my second and Kate's third.  I'm not going to name this place because we know people who's children are there.
Very Stepford.
First off, if anyone was wondering (I was) whatever happened to the tiny little woman from the first Poltergeist film, she's running a daycare facility in Madison.
I'm going to struggle with the the whole daycare thing.  Not the fact that the little guy will be in daycare, I'm cool with that.  We both have careers that we've worked very hard to advance and which we don't want to (and can't really afford to) give up.  Also, we may or may not provide this child with a sibling, but not is more likely.  Having lots of exposure to peer groups from as early as possible is something we both think is very important.
It's just that daycare is very very shinyhappy.
I don't do shinyhappy.
I know for a fact that there are long-term friends and family who are thrilled about our having a child in part because they think that the experience will finally get me to do shinyhappy.
Who knows?
Maybe it will, and then I'll be more willing to put my kid in the Stepford daycare.  Not now though.
Mind you, unless I'm willing to start one, I don't see us finding a daycare that does mildlycynical and ironicallydark instead of shinyhappy.  I'm probably not going to start one, even if it means I can replace pastel baby farm animal images with skulls.
Maybe I'm on to something here.  Momento Mori Daycare.  I'll have to work on that.
Right after I finish my project to open a restaurant next door to Kate's clinic called Just Like Chicken.
Anyhow, this place actually creeped Kate out more than it did me.  It clearly caters to folks in our income bracket and higher.  That's partially evident from the rates, but also from the whole feel of the place.  It's sort of a compound.  Multiple buildings spread around a campus.  Very enclosed and isolated.  Minimal ethnic diversity amongst the kids that we saw, and none amongst the staff.  The staff that we saw (not including Tangina) were all twenty something conventionally pretty white women dressed in business casual.  The children certainly looked well cared for and happy, but then, they're already setup to be doctors or lawyers or corporate moguls.  I think the thing that put us off the most was the business attire of the staff.  None of them looked ready to get dirty with the kids, and that bothered both of us.

Yesterday was very eventful.
My in-laws came in to Madison and after we took them to lunch they took us to BabiesRUs.  They'd offered to buy us a stroller several months ago, and had done some background research, and came in to show us what they'd found.
This was our first trip to BabiesRUs.  Kate was very geared up to be completely irritated by the place, but it was much better than we thought it would be.  Our experience with big box stores in Madison hasn't been all that good.  Generally they're fine if you know exactly what you're looking for and they're having a sale, but if you need actual assistance or product knowledge your SOL.
Not the case at this BabiesRUs.
There were lots of sales staff on hand, and the couple that we talked to were very helpful.  Kate's parents ended up buying a pretty cool stroller for the little dude.  It's one of those three wheel off-road type frames with the car seat that snaps in.  I missed the lesson on how to fold it (I finally figured out the one my brother gave us), so I'll have to go through that misery again, but this time I'll have the manual so I won't need to do any internet searching.  But it's very cool.  I took it for a test spin around the store aisle and it does excellent wheelies and doughnuts.
They also bought a little chair thingy that the baby sets in and rocks, and some additional car seat bases for the car seat part of the stroller.
Thanks again, Cathy and Bill.

Last night we had dinner with some friends, and the naming wars officially began.  So far Kate has ruled out:
Linus, Claude, Nebuchadnezzer, Achmed, Fergus, Angus, Finn, Shlomo, and Pablo.  I want to point out that not all of these suggestions were mine.
But I like Linus.
Kate is very focused (unduly, in my opinion) on how much school yard teasing might be associated with the name.  I think school yard teasing is inevitable and don't want to empower it by allowing it to influence my thinking on a name.
Our friend Theresa suggested Locke.
Think about it.
Anyhow, this looks like it's going to be contentious.  Every living thing we've named was actually named by attrition.  We ended up with the name that happened to be suggested when we were tired of arguing about it.  I should have held on to Linus for a while.