Baby stuff is expensive and overwhelming.

And so it begins...

Actually, it began a while ago, but now that Christmas is approaching, and our shopping is out of the way for that, the next major purchases start to surface. I'm pretty sure our child is going to have nicer things that we do, and that's fine. I'm pretty sure that's how life is supposed to go anyway. But man o man, baby stuff is expensive. Let's discuss what we've looked at so far. Please please please those of you with kids and/or experience with any of these items, leave us some feedback on this stuff!

First of all, let's talk car seats. I've been researching car seats for about two months now, and I'm fairly certain I could pick a quality seat for toddlers and up. Infant seats seem to not get as much attention. I believe that I have it narrowed down though. First on my list is the Britax Chaperone. This seems to be one of the best rated and reviewed infant seats I can find. The plus side being that it works very easily with the Britax strollers to make travel system. I have a number of other seats from Combi, The First Years, Sunshine Kids, Graco, and even some other Britax seats on the list, but none seem to be as highly regarded or well reviewed. At least not ones that have a carry handle for the infant seats.

Which leads us to strollers. Obviously, compatibility is high on our list of requirements, but I know that many strollers are compatible with seats/etc with little effort. I really haven't done a ton of research on the strollers, because there are just so many out there. Also, it will depend initially on which seat we pick, as I stated, we'd like to have that compatibility/functionality. I've really only been focusing on the Britax strollers. The B-Agile seems to be the one I gravitate towards. I believe that eventually we'd look at something like a Mountain Buggy Terrain for hiking/camping.

Furniture. I have no idea where to start. I have my obvious list of things that I want. Specifically an all organic/natural mattress. But that's about as far as I've gotten. So what about the actual crib and dresser, changing station etc? We both really like the Annabelle collection from Million Dollar Baby. But there is so much out there, it's sort of overwhelming. A 4-in-1 seems to be the way to go, at least price wise. And the rest of the furniture should be adequate throughout early childhood, if not longer. But there are so many things out there.

What do you all recommend? What have you had luck with? What would you avoid?