The Nova Skye Story - The Stroller

by Richard Rowell, Father-to-Be

Sometimes you just know when the universe is telling you something. Yesterday, we planned on going to a couple stores to find something completely unrelated to what we needed for Nova. At the first two stores, we didn't find what we were looking for. But we did find other stuff.

We found a cute microfiber towel at the Dollar Tree, though. But at the second store, Big Lots, we did find some receiving blankets at half the price they were on Amazon. This allowed us to get 6 for the price of 3. We wanted to find those at Dollar Tree, but they haven't had them at any locations we visited. 2 dollars a piece seemed good, and we're set with those for now.

But the big thing happened when we decided to go by the thrift store when we were on the way back home. It was on the way, so we stopped to see what baby stuff they had. Turns out, they had a Graco baby stroller.

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The funniest part is that this stroller was the same exact model she'd had before. This green  Winnie the Pooh stroller was the one that her third and fourth kids, Aja and Nathan, had. But of course, it was given away to someone who needed it years ago. The fifth kid wasn't exactly planned after all this time, you know.

We checked it thoroughly. It was only 30 dollars, which is pretty low for something like that. The stroller we found was still in perfect working order. It just needs some cleaning up. But being my usual thrifty self, I suggested we wait until Saturday, the next day, so we could get it at half price.  Lyn pointed out that it would likely be gone that same day. We couldn't risk passing up that deal. So I coughed up the cash I had in my wallet for that and a few other little things.

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We were going to get a Graco stroller and car seat combination. Now we only need to get the car seat. There were some good deals online, so in the end we probably will only save 30 or 40 dollars. But it may end up being more than that if we find a good deal on a Graco car seat. By law, used car seats can't be sold. That's because you don't know if they’ve been in an accident. So we have to get that new. There are a couple programs available to get a new one for free. So the savings could be a lot more.

Between getting that and the receiving blankets yesterday, that took two more things off our list of baby needs. When you're getting baby stuff, you have lot to get so you can't pass up a single deal if it's quality stuff you're getting.

Beyond the car seat, the swing and high chair are the major things we still need.  Listia and the Amazon Baby Registry have gotten us everything else. I'm touched by the amount of support we've received from family and friends. All the people giving away all of their old stuff on Listia have been great too. Lyn’s been winning all the stuff, though. I’ve only gotten a couple of things myself. We bought 30 dollars of credits and got well over 200 dollars worth of stuff. With Nova probably a couple months away, it's crunch time. Wish us luck as we get the last few major items!

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