Congrats! My wife and I had our first 8 months ago and it has been exciting so this post will be ridiculously long. We received and bought all the "necessary" infant and baby items. We're first time parents so we wanted to be prepared, we heard that we didn't need half this stuff but you're scared and you just don't know. So even if you heed none of this advice I won't blame you. I know 9 months ago I would have read all this and still bought everything I did :)
You're baby is going to get sick and get you sick. They have weird mutant baby germs. Be prepared to lose all your PTO, sick days, and vacation time in the span of a couple months.
If anything goes wrong -- and not to scare you, but it does sometimes -- you want doctors and top-notch medical care there. Minutes and seconds count in cases of oxygen deprivation, etc.
From all my friends and families stories there always seems to be something that goes wrong so go to a hospital/birthing center. Our son came at 38 weeks, labor was only 45 minutes but there was the inevitable "tear" and his cord was really short. Nothing scary, but I felt much more comfortable surround by nurses and a doctor who did this stuff 2-3 times a day. Even our seemingly perfect delivery and labor came with some hitches.
His favorite toys are a paper towel tube, a packet of fruit snacks (unopened, he likes the sound and texture), and any box or plastic bin. All our other colorful "baby" toys from stores are played with about a quarter as much. If he's fussy, any of the favorite toys make him happy immediately. Also just crawling over daddy and mommy is fun. Oh, and a plastic bowl and plastic spoon, he goes ape*hit over that! :)
So my advice, don't buy any toys. You probably already have every toy your baby is going to want for at least the next year and you'll get some as gifts. Otherwise craigslist but be prepared to clean and sterilize used toys. Even family hand me downs were half a day of cleaning old baby gunk off of. Don't get offended, after a couple months you'll realize babies are disgusting slobbering germ monsters.
His first bassinet was a plastic bin lined with towels. Which is also what they used at the hospital.
I used a large reusable cloth grocery bag to carry him around in, put him to sleep and he loved it. Lots of giggles. Plus it's f'n adorably cute.
We use day care and they don't allow cloth diapers so we buy disposable. Costco is great for this. Quality matters, we buy the name brand stuff.
Even if your wife cannot breast feed, pump. but don't watch, there is just something eery about a machine milking your wife. Eventually she ran dry though so we had to buy formula. At first we bough the really expensive stuff and then we tried the cheaper stuff at half the price and he didn't die or puke or poop all over us.
Don't get a baby bathtub - we used a warm washcloth on her changing table until her cord fell off, then she bathed in the tub with daddy.
We did the same, and the sink, but we were gifted a bath tub so we started using it along with lots of floaty bath toys that came with it as well.
the only purchase I would recommend is the Signing time videos but those can be bought much later.
http://www.signingtime.com/TL;DR - Don't buy anything except maybe this
http://www.signingtime.com/.