Crib shopping!

I have never shopped for a crib before. Before Erin was born, we were very generously given a hand-me-down crib, which Erin slept in until she was almost 2, at which point we stored it for a few years until Orren was born. Then Orren used it until he was 13 months, at which point it developed some structural problems that created safety hazards, and we moved Orren to a big bed.

We still have the broken crib, and plan on trading it in at the Babies R Us semi-annual trade-in event. Basically, what you do is bring in some piece of baby gear that is broken or expired (like carseats, they expire) and for getting unsafe gear out of circulation, you are given a 25% discount voucher for a new product from any of the participating brands, good that day only. They usually have one of the trade-in events in the winter, so that's when we're planning on buying our new crib.

It's just kind of fun, you know? I've shopped for carseats, and strollers, and countless articles of baby clothing, even a giant collection of cloth diapers. A crib is probably the one piece of baby gear I have never picked out for myself. It's fun thinking of what we want in a crib, what color, what style, what our price range might be. There's so much to choose from!

Here is one I really love.
This is similar to the first.
This one is a little simpler, but still looks nice.
This one, we also like a lot.
I love this one, too.

Really, we want to stick with light wood because we liked the look of that with our other crib. It gives a lighter feel to the room, and for a baby's room, that's good. We want something that is nice and sturdy because not only is it a possibility that this baby will be just as wild as Orren (why do you think our other crib broke??) , but Orren himself will be in the room with it, so it needs to stand up to at least one busy boy, possibly two. It has to be tough. I want solid wood with all metal hardware. (Believe it or not, not all cribs these days are made like that. Some are made very cheaply.) I also think that since we are buying a whole new crib that we will only ever use with one baby, it absolutely must give us years of use. That means we want a convertible crib. It needs to convert to a toddler bed and a day bed, which would give us the chance to use it most of the way through preschool, more than likely. Most of these also convert to a full size bed, but we won't be using it for that since when the baby outgrows it as a daybed, we plan to just do bunk beds. We don't have enough space to give our kids a full size bed if they are sharing a room. A twin bed each, we could do, but bunk beds are better since they take up less floor space.

Who ever thought a choice of crib had long-term implications?? Ha! We WILL get our money's worth one way or another, though!