Do you hate your parents?

This is the question I feel like asking my now-angelic daughter this morning. She cried non-stop from 9pm to about 9:30am. Non-stop is maybe not the right phrase. When the crying became constant I'd get up and feed her. But for most of the night she'd let out one or two loud cries (enough to wake us) and then mumble herself back to sleep, and she'd do this about once every 5 minutes. So she didn't want to be fed or burped or anything, just wanted to complain.

Anyway, I obviously wrote that hours ago. After a half hour to an hour of solid napping she went back to the complain every few minutes thing - sigh. I also threw my back out this morning, so I'm getting nothing done today.

I have been online looking for ways to spend the $200 Babies'R'Us gift card that Jason's office gave us. Not his co-workers, but the company itself. Am somewhat annoyed because with very few exceptions, Babies'R'Us is one of the most expensive retailers. Also, much of their selection is available only online, and to add insult to injury, their shipping charges are highway robbery and they don't do ship to store for free, or buy a certain value of merchandise and ship free or anything like that. While the gift card is free money, but I still feel wrong buying something there for more than it would cost elsewhere. Especially when it's not a comparable item but an actual "I found this item by this manufacturer and here's the identical item at another store from the identical manufacturer" situation. That is the case I am finding today with baby gates. I found one model that looks like it might work, but when I add in the shipping, even with the 15% off sale they are having now, Babies'R'Us comes out to being way more expensive than the identical item at Target. That said, I'm not even 100% sure I want that model anyway.

Due to the lovely 9' ceilings on the main floor, we have a super-long run of stairs in our house. Unfortunately, the spacious staircase that was one of the things that drew me to this house, is also a bitch to fit for baby gates. the vast majority of gates go up to 38" or so. Some of the wider ones make it to 42". My staircase is a whopping 45" wide. This severely limits my selection with respect to gates, and interestingly, eliminates every single gate reviewed by Consumer Reports. Annoyingly, they only review 5 models of hardware-mounted gates anyway. Target alone carries 20+ models of this type of gate, so I don't know how they can review only 5 models and think they've done their job. So here I sit, staring at a bunch of gates, all looking rather similar online, all with reviews that vary from the 1-star "flimsy, hard to install, easy for my child to open" up to 5-star "LOVE THIS GATE!" reviews. Of course there is no where you can actually go to see these things installed and working and test the various latch mechanisms. And the pictures provided online show the entire gate installed and a smiling mommy with a golden retriever at her feet but never show the gate itself close-up enough to make out where the latch is, much less how it works.

I think I might just give up on this gate thing for now. It's not like we need it that soon anyway.