Crib Notes

Saturday morning we set out with two destinations in mind: Dunkin’ Donuts and Sofa Express. I had a vague recollection of an upholstered rocker from when we were sofa shopping two and a half years ago. I bribed Chris with the promise of hot wings for lunch, provided we could entertain ourselves in that area of town until lunch. Eight hours later, we pulled into our driveway after buying a crib. We didn’t set out to buy a crib; in fact I had already selected the crib and was planning to order it this month. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Turned out, Sofa Express was long gone but we could still make out the letters from where their sign used to hang. We tried the furniture store next door instead and the nice salesman directed us to USA Baby across the parking lot, a store we didn’t know existed. I think several hours were lost in this store although I didn’t check my watch. To my delight, they had around a dozen upholstered gliders. Even better, they were very reasonably priced. Another bonus, they were made by Best Chairs, an Indiana company (shopping local and shopping independent is important to us and if we have an option, we really want to do most of the nursery shopping this way). After writing down measurements/prices and looking at swatches, we asked when their sale ended and were told Sunday – the next day. Yikes. That gave me less than 24 hours to make a chair decision.

We broke for lunch and I spent most of it researching Best Chairs on Chris’s iTouch (thank goodness the restaurant had free wi-fi). When we got back in the car, I decided we should go to other baby furniture stores to see ALL of what was available before making the purchase. The problem was that we didn’t know about any other stores. So we pulled up to Panera and siphoned their wi-fi. We went into a terrible little store in Carmel – walked in and out in under 60 seconds. By this point, we were very close to Decor 4 Kids which is where I planned to order the crib I had finally selected (after much research and debate) so we figured, why not head over there and look at their chairs. Turned out they carried the same line of Best Chairs and their everyday prices were better than the sale pricing at USA Baby (see – all of this work was paying off – although this was a hard sell to Chris at this point). So, the pressure was off to order a chair in the next 24 hours. Shelly, the friendly saleswoman at Decor 4 Kids (whom I’ve been emailing off and on for the last month) asked if she had told us about their Noblesville store when we were in the last time. No – she most certainly did not tell us about their other store – which is TWO AND A HALF TIMES bigger than the one we were in! Well, you can see where I’m going with this. Shelly gave us directions and bid us farewell with the portentous message of “you never know what you’ll see on the floor that might catch your eye.”

So, off we went to Noblesville, with a brief pit-stop at Dairy Queen to get some sugar in our systems to carry on. I must say that Chris was quite the trooper. I don’t know a lot of men who could withstand 8 hours of nursery shopping with very little complaining. Since the chair pressure was off, we looked at cribs. The bigger store had a fantastic deal on a floor model crib in antique white with distressed edges. I stood there for quite some time, debating what to do. For weeks now I’ve been fitting the puzzle pieces together in my head – paint chips, fabric swatches, floor plans. Was this The Crib? The price was certainly right. The finish was exactly what I was looking for although the style wasn’t one I had previously looked closely at (I was thinking spindles or beadboard). As I looked the crib over, I saw that it was made by Child Craft – another Indiana company. Sold! Here’s a picture from Child Craft’s website, although I don’t think it really does it justice since it’s pictured in matte white and the off-white distressed finish is what really sold me on it:

We paid for the crib, agreed to pick it up sometime in the future and drove home. Exhausted and happy. We had bought a crib. Wow. This is really happening.