Why you ask? In Guate, all baby item stores are incredibly overpriced, I mean 200% or more than I know the product would cost me in the US. Local baby gear purchases beyond the basics are a luxury that I simply can no longer afford after making the important decision to stay at home rather than supplement our family`s income by working. This is when having family in Houston comes in really handy! I would say that 70-80% of all of Hannah`s clothing, gear, toys, etc. are blessings from my parents. However, there were several large purchases that I just had to make locally. One such purchase was a stroller, but I refused to spend +$400 on a basic stroller.
While pregnant, I was introduced to what would become and still is my one-stop-shop for all things baby, a store called Kids Box. The upside: it is a warehouse store that imports baby products in bulk and sells then at reasonable prices, for Guate standards that is. The downside: lots of local retailers buy their stock there too. That means that you have to be on watch via Facebook to know when their latest shipment arrives so that you can get there early the next day, or if need be that same day, otherwise you have to settle for the left-overs. The hottest selling items: strollers. I went through three months of Facebook stalking until finally I arrived at a shipment early enough to still find a good selection of strollers. I chose a travel system stroller so I wouldn´t have to purchase a car seat as well. Okay, first-time mommy ignorance, are strollers not meant to be used on rock paved streets? Shouldn´t they be sturdier, I mean travel systems come with car seats you place on top of the stroller + baby`s weight so they should be able to handle "extra" weight, right? Well, let´s just say I found out the hard way that the answer is no, they shouldn´t be used on rock paved streets and no, they can´t handle "extra" weight. By "extra" I mean 25 lb. baby + camera equipment + blankets + purse, and I wasn´t even using the car seat!
Back-story: I have only uploaded dark looking photographs because most of our baby photo taking during Hannah`s first 9 months was done with my old 3.1.3 OS iPhone or my husband´s newer one. Luckily, my sister came to visit us during "Semana Santa" and one of her gifts to us... you guessed it: a professional +Canon Users camera! So this past Saturday we decided to test drive our new camera in, what I consider, the nicest shopping center in Guatemala City +Paseo Cayalá. We took several much improved photographs and my darling Hannah was surprisingly cooperative. After a delicious lunch at Saul we headed back to the car and... down came baby, stroller and all! I had a firm grasp on the stroller and so I was able to stop it mid fall, but let´s just say getting baby out of said, and now broken, stroller while trying to recover the contents of my purse and trying not to drop our new camera equipment, even with my husband´s help was a stressful and slightly embarrassing end to our improvised "photo shoot", but hey... we got better photos of Hannah!
In Memoriam of the stroller...
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