You know you’re a DaddyNoob when… “You use your economy car to pick up a baby crib. Oh yeah! I did that!”
It is true, over a month ago my wife and I went to pick a used crib off of Kijiji. As the noob father I am, I went unknowing the size of what cribs are. I naïvely took the hour drive out of the city to the seller’s home without an hint of reservation that the crib may not fit into our spacious economy car. The lady selling the crib had it nicely dissembled and waiting for pick up in her garage. After we settled on a fair price, we hauled the pieces out and leaned them on the side of their garage. It was a little bit of a trek back to the car, so I figured it would make more sense to drive the car around to the back alley for easy loading. Everything was going perfectly to plan. I was ecstatic at how seamlessly simple we made our first baby purchase look. The confidence of a veteran parent was flowing through my veins. Then minutes later, it came to a quick halt.
Let me put some context to this story. Back in November, we decided to do the opposite as most people, and sell our SUV to purchase a car. We loved our SUV but it was getting high on kilometres and my wife was using it to commute forty five minutes one way to work. We bought it a couple years back hoping that it would increase our odds in getting pregnant. Yes! That’s correct, we revised Kevin Costner’s advice from Field of Dreams and thought that, “if we bought it, baby would come.” I quickly realized that the purchase of a family friendly ride doesn’t increase your chances of conceiving, but it sure does make it easier getting in and out of your vehicle. Anyway, we opted to buy a Honda Civic, as we had one before that was incredibly reliable and amazing on fuel economy. This was the best decision we made and never regretted selling our SUV until that day we picked up the crib.
After over a dozen attempts of trying to slide all of the pieces of the crib through our trunk with the seats down. I was frustrated and humbled. I was actually considering leaving the crib there and count our money spent as a learning lesson. After fifteen minutes of trying every solution, even one that had our side window down and a piece hanging out of it. It dawned on us, why not dismantle it even more. It was a brilliant idea, that was thought of by none other, than my wife. Perfect. The only way the humiliation could be worse is if the lady we bought it from saw me still struggling. Yep! That happened too. I swallowed my pride, took my wife’s advice and we had the crib successfully stacked in our car. I drove home with my seat jammed all the way to the front, which makes it easier for my knees to steer than my hands. Good times and an important lesson was learnt; find out the dimensions before leaving, or maybe buy a SUV!
Just another day as the DaddyNoob
