On Monday a co-worker asked me how my house-hunting had gone over the weekend. "House hunting?" I asked.

He responded, "Yeah, didn't you say you were gonna be looking at houses this past weekend?"

We went back and forth trying to figure out why he thought that. That is, until I realized that last Friday I had told him that this weekend would be spent "Crib shopping".

Crib shopping was pretty insightful. There are a LOT of cribs out there. I originally thought that the Target/Walmart cribs were really nice... until we went to these baby boutique stores. Did you know that you could buy a crib for the price of a small house? I kinda had a small freak-out session in the middle of "Babies R Us" when I started seeing quadruple digit price tags. But after a while I started seeing how nice looking these boutique cribs were--almost like the Cadillacs of cribs. We did go back to Wal-mart later and see their selection of cribs again. By then I felt like we HAD to have the best crib money could buy. No child of mine will be sleeping in a cheap-o Target crib!

But I thought back on my childhood. My parents raised both my sister and I in a pretty cheap crib that neither of us can easily remember. My parents told me that that crib had actually been handed down twice to us, and when we were done with it, my parents handed it down to another family at our church. Do I miss it? No. Do I even remember it? No. Did I feel like I missed out on anything by not having a boutique crib? Definitely not. And I know that my parents don't feel like that either.

I used to think that my parents weren't as happy back when they first had me because they didn't have much money with my dad being in grad-school and they were living in a small 1 bedroom apartment in Houston. Looking back at old baby pictures, I always noticed the difference in what they had then vs what they have now and thought how much happier must they be now. But as Carolyn and I closely parallel their situation some 30 years later, I realize that there is a sense of joy regardless of what we have. The Bible says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!". There is great joy in coming home to our small apartment filled with the smells of dinner cooking on the stove. Being greeted by my beautiful wife who selflessly puts her family's needs before her own. Retelling the experiences of the day as we unwind on the couch.

Boutique crib? Nah.