You've bought us what?!

Last night Hayley's Dad rang. (For the full effect you have to imagine his fabulous County Antrim accent.)

"Would you mind if we paid for your pram?"
"Dad, that's very kind of you. Thank you. We've seen..."
"Ah that's great. You'll love it. It's maroon."
[The sound of jaws dropping.]

Now we don't want to seem ungrateful. But maybe we are. Because frankly we'd like to choose the pram/buggy we are going to have to push around and deal with every day.

We've already been window shopping for one. Well, Microsoft Windows shopping. (This is the 21st century after all.) Hayley's admired the practicality, price and colour scheme. I've wondered how I can improve the design by retrofitting my spare mountain bike suspension forks to it. All the natural parental reactions, you know.

So is the answer a baby wish list?

I've seen one at lilypie.com who host the baby ticker at the top of this page. They have tickers for the nine months of pregnancy, for the first week of life, for the first month, first year, five years... they even have a ticker for Trying To Conceive, which frankly I think is taking it a bit far. (Decide for yourself here.)

It seems a little clinical to just put up a list of items that we need. So I think we'll stick to the personal touch. Also known as polite begging. And like some bizarre baby video game, we'll try to negotiate maroon buggies as we go.