Baby Registering and "Chess" Burgers

We are headed to Michigan in a little over a week and will have a baby shower when there, so we thought we should start registering (even thought it's quite early!). I have been to Babies R Us several times to buy gifts for friends and have never had a great experience since they always seem to be out of everything. However, it seems to be THE place to register and we were told by multiple friends that if we register there, we'd be able to check which car seats fit in our car by taking them out to our car and trying them out. This was a huge motivating factor for us to drive the 30-40 minutes to a store we didn't like, since we own a Honda Civic and were not sure which car seats would fit. Since Babies R Us is in a town we are not familiar with, we looked up some restaurant options for dinner so that we could turn it into a date night. We found a place that looked great that had gyros, which Noel loves and hasn't had since we moved out here!

Upon arriving at Babies R Us, we met with the gift registry associate who was absolutely no help at all. She basically handed us a scanner and told us to come back when we were finished. There was no list of items we should consider getting, no description of where things were in the store, nothing. We asked about trying out car seats in our car and she said, "No, we don't do that". We explained that several friends had been to this same store and had done it and wondered if the policy changed recently. She said, "No, we've never done that". So, off we went. We wandered quite aimlessly through the store since we hardly know what one baby needs let alone two! After randomly scanning things for over an hour, I had had it. I told Noel we needed to go right away. We went back to the desk, asked again about the car seats, and asked if we could speak to the manager. The manager came over and gave us a lame excuse about not having enough employees there that night for us to be able to do that (the store was NOT busy). I was fed up and HUNGRY and so we decided to leave.

Off we went to the restaurant we looked up. Yay for gyros and maybe some Greek salad! We arrived at the restaurant, which happened to be in a pretty sketchy area. It was a little hole in the wall place (which often means it's great), and had a banner in front saying, "Gyros (then a price), Hamburgers and Chess Burgers". (Side note: it's very common for ethnic restaurants to advertise that they also sell hamburgers out here. We think they think that it attracts more Americans. It's also common for banners to contain misspellings, but it never fails to be funny). Anyway, "Chess burgers??!?!?" I yelled! "Noel, do you see that sign?! They have Chess burgers!" I started to lose it. He did not seen the sign at first and didn't know what I was talking about. I was laughing so hard that I started crying, which soon turned into crying for real (thanks to those pregnancy hormones!). We went up to the door (still excited for our Greek food) and they were CLOSED! Who closes at 7 these days??? Now I was really upset. "I hated registering! I just wanted it to be fun! I just wanted to find this good gyro place! And it's so sad that this sign says Chess Burgers! And I'm so HUNGRY!" I cried to Noel. He was very reassuring that we could find a different place to eat, which we did.

We were still frustrated with Babies R Us as they told us to come back on a weekday morning when they were less busy to try out the car seats. We explained that we lived 40 minutes away and that wasn't an option for now. So, we found a place for dinner, then headed to Target, and registered there as well. They were great and gave us a gift bag filled with lots of useful coupons! We also created a small registry at Amazon the next day online. It's all a work in progress as I still need to connect with friends who have twins to ask about how much of everything we need, but at least it's started.

And if we're ever back in that town, maybe we'll have to check out those Chess Burgers!