Adventures in gift registry

Part of this growing a human thing is that when it's your first human, you don't have any stuff.  This means that people want to give you stuff because they're celebrating the parasite you've decided to spawn and women all just luuuuuurve babies.  So that means you have to go through the process of dealing with a baby shower.  I don't like baby showers.  I've never liked them.  I hate attending them.  I hate all of the women walking around clucking like hens, going on and on about babies and asking whoever is pregnant a ton of personal questions that would not be acceptable anywhere else in polite society.  I hate the idiotic games they have you play.  I hate watching people open gifts while everyone goes "Awwwwww!" or whatever.  It's just.....showers suck.  But, on the other hand, I like stuff.  Stuff is expensive.  You need to get the stuff that is expensive and it's often nice if you don't have to get it yourself.  So, for the sake of stuff, I'm suffering through a baby shower.

The thing about stuff, and getting the stuff you need/want is that you have to do a gift registry.  Gift registries basically shout "I WANT THIS ONE" which I think is probably good, that way you don't end up with a ton of crap that you don't want, in theory.  The thing is, I was being all nice and trying to let my mother be involved in this so I let her go with me to do the registry thing.  That got dramatic.  I am very minimalist on what I think you "need" for babies.  My mother is not.  Her house and yard look like a Toys R Us vomited all over them.  I don't think you "need" a million pieces of gear.  I think you probably "need" some gear but probably don't end up using most of it.  That's what I'm told anyway.  So, I wanted to keep the list minimal.  She wanted to make it batshit insane.  There were a lot of arguments and exchanges that went a lot like this:

On Sleeping Gear
Mom: You need one of these sling hammock bassinets.
Me: Why?  I got a pack n' play.  It functions for sleeping AND as a baby cage.  That's a multi-tasker.
Mom: Those are big.  You don't want something that big in your bedroom.  You'll want something smaller like this.
Me: I have a really big bedroom
Mom: No, it's going to be in the way, you will want to have both.
Me: No, if I have both then one of them will ALWAYS be in the way, because I'll have to store one somewhere and it'll be annoying.
Mom: I'm just saying, if you get the hammock sling one, her head will be propped up and she won't choke to death.
Me: Mom, we survived the dark ages, I'm pretty sure she can survive sleeping in a goddamn pack n' play.

On Cribs
Mom: You need to register for a crib
Me: Haven't found one I like yet, I'll get to it.
Mom: At this rate she won't have anywhere to sleep when you bring her home.
Me: Apparently you missed our previous conversation about the pack n' play.
Mom: Well if you don't get a crib she's going to end up sleeping in a dresser drawer.
Me: That's probably fine if you just line it with some blankets like you would do for a litter of puppies.
Mom: That's not funny.
Me:  It'll prep her for all of the years we plan to keep her chained in the basement like Sloth from Goonies....
Mom: If you keep talking like that, I'm leaving.
Me:  Promise?

On Other Gear
Mom: You need one of these bouncer seats.
Me:  No, you gave me one to keep at the house when I was babysitting the niece, along with a ton of other shit you thought I needed just to be able to babysit and then she never used.
Mom: You can't use that old piece of junk, you need a new one.
Me:  You bought it and put your granddaughter in it!  Now it's a piece of junk?
Mom:  You need a new one.  This one has elephants.  Get that one.

Mom:  Scan this.
Me:  I don't want a bunch of pink stuff, do they have a more neutral color?
Mom:  Scan this one.
Me:  Mom, I said I don't want a ton of pink.
Mom:  You're already painting her room blue.  She's going to get a complex.  It's a girl, she needs pink.
Me:  No, she needs you to not conform her to your gender roles.

Mom:  Did you get a baby monitor?
Me:  No, not yet.  *picks up random monitor from shelf*  This one will do.
Mom:  YOU CAN'T DO THAT!  You can't just pick one up and say "this will do".
Me:  Why not?  Everyone says these break all the time anyway so I'll just be replacing it in 6 months.
Mom:  Because you have to be able to hear the baby!  You have to be able to make sure she's ok.
Me:  I can.  This one is made solely for that purpose, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
Mom:  You need a video monitor.
Me:  No I don't.  You didn't have a video monitor with any of us and we all survived.
Mom:  Well you can't just pick up a random monitor and decide it's good enough.
Me:  It also has the the longest distance range of anything else on the shelf, it has 2 handsets, and is mid-level price.
Mom:  How do you know all that?
Me:  I can read the tags on the shelf, mom.

On clothing
Me: *looking at Thanksgiving themed sleeper* Ooh, let's dress her as a turkey!
Mom:  That's so mean, stop being like that!
Me:  No, it's funny.
Mom: There's nothing funny about it.
Me: *holding up sleeper* How is this not funny?  Its entire purpose is to be funny.  You've just insulted its whole existence.

It goes on, but you get the general idea.  Eventually, after arguing for a while I realized I could edit the registry at home online and delete everything I didn't want that she was insisting I order, so I started just scanning everything she held up.  We call those survival instincts.