Avoiding the Rainbows and Puppies Bandwagon

This is surprisingly difficult. As many of you know, I'm not normally the cutsie patootie type. I like puppies and kittens as much as the next person but don't go much for pink and frills and have remained fairly true to my tom-boy younger self in my old age (at least I think I have).

However, when pregnant you are bombarded from outside with pastels and "aww, look you've got a cute little bump now!" and you are plagued from the inside by changing hormones which I'm pretty sure make you more susceptible to the outside pressures of cute adorable things. Self control over food as well as cute onesies and knitting patterns just goes out the window. The Target baby aisle is a mine field for pregnant women hopped up on pre-natal hormones. It's only a short step from buying a onesie that says "Mommy's favorite little pooper" to talking constantly about sheet patterns and nursery themes to strangers you meet on the street.

My defense has been to avoid baby specific shopping trips, which isn't so hard since I don't shop much anyway. Knitting cute things instead of buying them costs less, takes much more time to complete and also keeps you from snacking during football games. Also, allowing B to turn me away from the pastel paints at Home Depot and ridiculously patterned strollers at Target helps as well.

I spend some time on pregnant lady forums like thebump.com and I see these women putting up pictures of their cute $200 bedding sets they've just bought for their crib, or their $1,000 nursery furniture that they've already purchased 4 months into their pregnancy and most of me is disgusted by the amount of money they're spending on things their child isn't even going to remember in 5 years. However, there is a little part of me that pictures those things in our not yet started nursery and takes a mental note of the brand name, this part of me is new and a little frightening.

For those of you curious about my knitting projects:

Number 1 (Completed): Infant Squid hat (picture and pattern from: http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Squid+232+bi) I used light blue instead of white (no we don't know the sex yet) and multi-hued purple for the blue part.

Number 2 (in progress): 9 month old cable knit sweater (pattern and picture from: http://www.berroco.com/exclusives/baby_poonan/baby_poonan.html) I'm using a really pretty grayish brown yarn instead of the traditional color pictured.
Number 3 (not yet started): Duckie socks (picture and pattern from: http://knitty.com/ISSUEss10/PATTduck.php)