A place for her to sleep

 

One thing that's become apparent since becoming pregnant has been the difficulty in obtaining a variety of baby products from America while being stationed overseas.  In the years past, we've run into occasional APO shipping difficulties, but it was seldom for products that were truly needed.  For example, our wine rack cubes couldn't be shipped here directly from the manufacturer so we sent them to Brian's folks and they, in turn, sent them to us... same with a few other items that we definitely wanted to have, but weren't essential.  It was an occasional frustration, but never that big of an issue.

Now that our family is expanding, it's a different story.  Baby Morrissey will need a place to sleep.. and a stroller, and  a car seat, etc.  Thankfully, some websites are far better than others and will ship things to APO addresses without much hassle.  If it takes 8-10 weeks to arrive, so be it... I'm just thankful it can get here.  We had wonderful luck recently when we ordered and received our stroller and car seat within two weeks!  I was pretty amazed- usually it takes longer than that for a simple letter to get here! 

Unfortunately, the one instance where this is not the case is with cribs.  There are virtually no baby stores or websites in the states that will ship a crib here (or to Korea for that matter).  The large base BX "mall" at Ramstein, which is an hour away, carries a few cribs, but the ones that they currently have in stock are very poorly rated by both consumer reports and Baby Bargains (a phenomenal resource book for all things baby gear related).  They also can order a few different (and higher rated) cribs, but they take 4-6 MONTHS to come in.  Not only will we we living in Korea by then, but the baby will have been born!  Our next option was to check the local German baby stores.  The Germans actually have some awesome (and adorable) baby furniture, but the crib dimensions are not the same as the states, so when we leave here and discover we need a replacement crib liner, or sheets, etc. we would need to order it from Europe and have it sent to wherever we are.  This is an option, but not a very economical one seeing as the products here are already quite expensive with the dollar/euro conversion rate, even before shipping. 

Since there is no BabiesRUs for us to duck into out here, we had one last hope...

 

Thankfully, the one chain that there is no shortage of out here is Ikea.  Now keep in mind that their stuff is no frills, and you have to assemble every last piece yourself, but we certainly weren't looking for a $700 sleigh crib, and Brian likes a good construction project so this seemed like a viable option.  Thankfully, it was!  We found a cute, highly rated crib that will look great in our nursery and will also convert to a toddler bed when the munchkin is toddling.  I promise I'll post a picture of it, along with some of our other nursery purchases in an upcoming post!  Until then, it is just a big relief to me that we found somewhere for our gummy girl to sleep.