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David Spates If pastels are tranquil
for babies, Pastels never have been my favorites, but
I suppose that with a baby on the way I had better start getting
used to them. Apparently, newborns wear nothing but pastels.
I don't know why, but it seems to be the case. The wife and I are in full-blown baby-prep
mode. We're moving stuff from one room to another. We've lined
up a pediatrician. We've signed up for a birthing class. We've
scheduled an appointment to look over the hospital's delivery
room. We're reading books written by experts, most of whom contradict
one another. We've got a short list of names. If there's something
we can do before delivery, we're doing it. Never before having
made a person, we have no idea what NEEDS to be done, what SHOULD
be done and what COULD be done, so pardon us if we seem a little
ridiculous. I presume experienced parents see first-timers like
us and just shake their heads like sophomores watching a gaggle
of clueless freshmen fumble around. Part of baby-prep mode includes shopping for
stuff. Baby stuff. All kinds of baby stuff. Stuff that, until
now, had been an unnoticed blur as I traipsed through the department
store searching for other stuff. And baby stuff, I now have noticed,
is pastel. I'm not sure if the babies met and decided
that, as a group, they prefer pastels. Perhaps a survey was taken
and parents responded, with a margin of error hovering in the
4-percent range, that pastels make for more relaxed babies, i.e.
sleepier babies, i.e. quieter babies, and if that's the case
then I endorse pastel-colored baby stuff with unmatched fervor.
Given my druthers, I'll take a sleepy baby every time. My 7-months-pregnant wife and I went shopping
for a crib over the weekend, and upon entering one of those giant
baby superstores in Knoxville I was temporarily blinded by the
sheer magnitude of pastel. This was the first time I had ever
stepped foot in a baby superstore, and I was amazed at how much
stuff there is, most of it pastel-colored. (I can hear the parents
out there now mumbling, "Just you wait." Yeah, yeah,
I know, I know.) Pastels are not limited to newborns' clothing.
Pastels have found their way into practically every item new
parents use. Pastel car seats, pastel diapers, pastel bottles,
pastel barf-wiping cloths and even pastel breast pumps. Nary
a bright hue to be found. The most prevalent use of newborn pastels is in the aforementioned clothing. I discovered happily, however, that the pastels are not limited to infant-feminine pink and infant-masculine blue. Shelia and I have decided not to find out the sex of the baby until birthday. When we tell some people this, they immediately ask, "Well, how can you buy clothes when you don't know the sex?" the assumption being that you follow the cliché of dressing boys in blue and girls in pink. Based on the frequency I've heard that question, I was operating under the notion that perhaps all newborn clothes were either pink or blue, and it wasn't until this weekend that I saw for myself that newborn clothes do indeed come in colors other than pink and blue. They're all pastel colors, of course, but
there are other colors. On a side issue, the reason we're leaving
the sex a surprise is simple. We figure there probably aren't
too many pleasant surprises left in our lives, so we'll enjoy
this one for a few more months. It's fun to speculate. It's also
been fun to come up with possible names for a boy and girl. Plus,
I can't come up with a good reason to find out ahead of time.
If I knew the sex today, I doubt I'd be doing anything substantially
different. Maybe I'm just old-school - you know, open your presents
Christmas morning instead of Christmas Eve. I figure a little
self-restraint now will be its own reward later. As far as the pastel clothes go, I suppose it's more for the parents than anything else. Pastels seem relaxed and tranquil, which is in sharp contrast to what I understand the first few months of a newborn's life actually is. When new parents have described their homelife to me, the words soft and tranquil never have been used. If parents were to dress newborns in a manner reflective of their day-to-day existence, perhaps an old Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt would be better -- lengthy, loud and exhausting. |