Fisher Price Rock 'n Play

When our Pickle was a baby 5.5 years ago, I was against the Fisher Price Rock 'n Play for absolutely no reason.  I didn't have any reason to hate on it, but I was so worried about it being a crutch, and we had a Nap Nanny we loved.

(I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a moment that may be unpopular.  We had a baby who passed away just before birth, so I would never make light of the death of a child.  That said, I find it frustrating when perfectly good products are pulled off of the shelves because people either can't take the time to read directions, or wildly disregard them.  The Nap Nappy was a little foam seat thing that was great for babies with reflux or bad sleepers.  It said clearly in the directions to only put it on the floor when the baby was in it, and to strap them in.  People disregarded this and put it in their babies' cribs - babies rolled out, and they got stuck between the Nap Nanny and crib and suffocated.  Nap Nanny responded by improving the seatbelts and putting giant warnings on the seats to never be used anywhere but the floor while attended.  People again disregarded this, and a few more babies were suffocated.  Due to this, the entire product was pulled off of the shelves altogether.  The Bumbo appears to be headed the same direction because people keep putting the freaking things up on counters and leaving their children there unattended.  I am 100% certain that whole grapes have killed large numbers more children than any of these items, but they're still on the shelves.  I am all for protecting babies, like discontinuing drop-side cribs - but this was due to blatant misuse.  Anyway.)

So, when Peanut was born, we needed a new bouncy seat.  My parents offered to get us one, and instead came home with the Fisher Price Rock 'n Play.  They brought home this one (LINK):

It was about $60, more than I had expected to spend.  I didn't want to be ungrateful, so we accepted it with thanks, and I expected to not use it.  I had found some articles saying not to use it overnight due to SIDS concerns, so I figured it would be a last resort during maternity leave during naps.

...Until one day when Peanut was sleeping and I super had to pee.  I strapped him into it (we called it "the Monkey") and turned on the vibration unit... and it was magic.  It was the longest he'd ever slept other than being in my arms and rocked.  

I tried it again the next day, and it again worked like a charm.  So, I started bribing my husband to putting Peanut in the Monkey at night while I went upstairs to nap, and it again kept the little guy asleep for hours.  The vibration unit was gentle and silent, and lasted for months.  The monkey pad was super-soft.  

While we've never used this overnight due to those few SIDS concerns, this was our go-to nap solution for almost a year.  I would never leave a baby unattended in it, and it may not be the most solid solution if you have a baby who really likes to roll in his sleep (Peanut was a log until about a year), but it goes to 25 pounds.  It was a lifesaver!

Re-Play "Down By the Sea" Dinnerware + GIVEAWAY

For a while I've struggled with a good dinnerware set for the Pickle.  She's big enough for regular tableware, but still little enough that she is messy.  If we use regular flat plates, food generally ends up getting pushed over the sides.  Regular silverware is just a little bit big for her mouth, and so it exacerbates her getting food on her face and clothing.  However, the infant feeding items are too little for her.

Re-play (LINK) changes that up.  They've got great dinnerware for toddlers and preschoolers.  The plates are divided into three convenient sections, and the edges are curved enough that food stays where it's supposed to be.  The sippy cups are perfect - they're big enough for a toddler or preschooler to get a full serving of milk or water, but they are just right for little hands.  The silverware is plastic, so you don't have to worry about it poking the insides of little mouths.  It's also just the right size - it's smaller than adult silverware, but it's bigger than the infant spoons that are usually what you can get at the big box stores.

Re-Play offers a ton of fun colors, like their "Down by the Sea" theme in greens, blues, and teals.  The colors are bright so that they keep the interest of a small child, but they also wash really well.

What's really cool about Re-Play, though, is for what they stand.  All of their products are recycled HDPE products, like milk jugs.  You're helping save the earth when you use Re-Play dinnerware!  Since it's from #2 HDPE plastic, it's BPA-free, as well as free of phthalates and PVC.  I'm a little obsessed with keeping these away from the kids, so I feel really good using these products. 

We had what we call "brinner" last night - pancakes, sausage, and fresh fruit.  The Re-Play set was just perfect for this - two small pancakes cut up perfectly in the big section, and the fruit and sausage fit well in the smaller areas.  The fork was sharp enough to stab the pancakes, but didn't scratch either my daughter or the plate!  

I am going to link the information for Re-Play's social media sites at the bottom of the page, because they are great about featuring sales and menu ideas on them.  (I like following pages that actually feature useful information!)

Are you sold yet?  Would you like a feeding set of your own?  Re-Play is hosting a giveaway through Mother Knows Best Reviews!  Go to our Facebook page here (LINK) and sign up!  We'll close the giveaway on Wednesday, May 27, so get your entries in!

Social Media Links:

https://www.facebook.com/RePlayRecycled

https://instagram.com/replayrecycled/

https://www.pinterest.com/replayrecycled/

https://twitter.com/Re_PlayPR

Bitybean Baby Carrier

I am a big fan of babywearing.  We did a decent amount with Pickle when she was small, but have done a lot more with Peanut.  I mostly wore him in a ring sling when he was itty bitty, and have split time between that and a Tula as he's gotten older.

The Tula is great, but it has its downsides.  It's not at all compact - if I take it anywhere, it's like it has to have its own seat.  It's incredibly hot in the humid midwest summer, as mine is a canvas carrier.  In addition, it is pretty heavy - normally this last one isn't a problem, but it can be when I'm carrying it when Peanut is tired of being worn.  My ring sling is woven, so it has most of the same problems - it's great for trips, but it's kind of a bear to lug around.

In comes the Bitybean (LINK).  I had a chance to try one recently.  On paper, the specs are similar to the canvas soft-structured carriers - it's for infants and toddlers between 3 months old and ideally 3 years, from 8 lbs to 40 lbs.  It can fit anyone from a size 0 to a maximum waist size of 46 inches, but there's also an extender you can purchase that adds an additional 12 inches.  Like many others, it can be worn in a front or back carry.  So, already it's stacking up well against the competition.

Now, let's look at the ways that the Bitybean pulls ahead - and there are many!  Here are just a few:

- Price.  In comparison to the $115 to $200 that are common for canvas carriers, the Bitybean is only $59.95.  That's at least half of the price of most other carriers!  Like many of the other carriers, you can additionally purchase an infant liner or sleep hood, which are also both moderately priced.  I know that price is a huge reason that many women feel they aren't able to babywear, and the Bitybean really helps to make that concern vanish.

- Compact and lightweight.  This blew me away.  The Bitybean comes in a convenient little sleeve that is about the size of a soup can.  It also weighs almost nothing (8 ounces!), so I can throw it in my diaper bag/purse - as you can see below, I've tried to consolidate everything to one bag already, and the Bitybean (the orange and black tube at the top) fits in there easily and doesn't weigh it down.  

- Breathable and water-safe.  I mentioned above that I throw the Bitybean in my diaper bag - that's because it is incredibly convenient to wear out and about.  It is made of a light nylon/polyester blend, so it's almost the texture of a rain poncho.  This makes it incredibly breathable and lightweight in the summer, but it has the added bonus of working great while swimming or in the rain.  We wore it on a rainy day at a festival this last weekend, and I didn't have to worry about damaging it when it rained on it, or about it weighing a hundred pounds when it was saturated with water.  The bulk of the rain just slid right off the back.  Both of the kids have swimming lessons this summer, and so I plan on wearing Peanut in it in the pool.  I can't think of another soft-structured carrier offhand that is designed to be worn in the water!  (Check Bitybean's website for good pointers on water wear, like wearing your baby in front while in the water so you can make sure their head is above water.)  

Added bonus:  If you're prone to spilling (as I am), it's not a big deal, as most liquids just roll right off and/or dry quickly.

This is what we get when Big Sis takes the photos.

- Ergonomic.  I wore the Peanut, who is now just over 20 lbs, in the Bitybean for several hours at the festival this weekend.  My back didn't hurt.  I love the quickness of a ring sling, but the problem as a baby gets older is that it's not an even distribution on your back - the Bitybean was developed with parents and babywearing experts to make it safe and ergonomic for mama as well as baby.  I wore it the past couple of weekends while doing housework, and it was convenient and comfortable.  

I am really pleased to have the Bitybean in my babywearing arsenal.  I still love my ring sling and my Tula, and they each have their time and place - but I can't imagine ever going back to lugging either of them around in my purse or in the car when the Bitybean performs every function they do and more.  Great, great buy - and cute colors (LINK)!

BabyLit Children's Books

We are a family of readers.  We all love sticking our nose in a book and getting lost in it.  It has always been really important to us that our children share that love.

When Pickle was an infant and toddler, we had lots of books, and shared them with her.  However - they were sort of boring, I'll be honest.  There were the picture books of feet and elbows and dolls and the like when she was really little.  As she got older, we incorporated Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon types of books.  Can I quickly say that I really just don't care for Pat the Bunny?  It's super-boring graphics, repetitive without really instilling any vocabulary - the tiny little interactive pieces were really the only redeeming value in the book.  As a parent, it would be mind-numbing to read these books that really had no inherent learning value.  So, when I recently got a chance to review some BabyLit children's books with the Peanut, I was ecstatic.

What are BabyLit books?  Easy.  They're literary classics, made for little ones - but with a sense of style (LINK).  Everything from Dracula to Anna Karenina is there, but has been made age-appropriate for a small child while still appealing to adults.

Here is the selection that we were lucky enough to sample:

Pride & Prejudice, Alice In Wonderland, Sense & Sensibility, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Sherlock Homes in The Hound of the Baskervilles.  

Already this was warming my former-English lit-major heart.  Reading these, I was much more engaged and interested than I am reading other kids' books - these are stories that I know, and it was fun for me to see how they took them and made them appropriate for children.  They were quaint and fun and cool.

What was also neat about each book is that they became a "primer" in a certain skill or area.  For example, Pride & Prejudice is a "counting primer" for kids:

The BabyLit book took a classic, familiar text, and turned it into a beautifully-illustrated lesson on counting.  Five sisters (one for each of the Bennet girls).  Four proposals (beware, there's a bit of a spoiler here if you're not familiar with the book!), etc.  This is a great way to introduce the concept of numbers to a very small child without making it intimidating.  Our little Peanut man loved it, but it was interesting enough that our 4.5-year-old Pickle also asks me to read it to her over and over even though she knows her numbers.  Since P&P is one of my two or three favorite books of all time, I have no issue obliging this request!
 
The Sherlock Holmes book is a "sounds primer":

Each of the pages featured an example of onomatopoeia - a door that creaks, a shoe that scrapes, and several other words created from their corresponding sounds.  Our little Peanut loves this one the best, because I try and make the words sound lifelike while I'm reading it to him.  Here's how he tries to read it to himself:

I swear this wasn't posed.

He usually spends most of his time chewing on the books; this is actually just fine with the BabyLit books, as they are thick cardboard board books.  As such, they are incredibly durable.  

Like I mentioned before, these books are also cool.  When they're not being read by the littles, we actually have them sitting out on our coffee table as conversation pieces.  We've had a few friends pick them up and leaf through them already - they always brings a smile, and are a great discussion piece.  

I loved these books, both of my kids loved these books, and our guests have loved these books.  I would absolutely display these even if we didn't have kids, but they're great books that capture the attention of a child while simultaneously teaching them something.  (That's something of a rarity these days!)  In addition, they foster awareness and love for the classical literature that is beneficial for the children to be exposed to later in life.  What a great idea!

(Totally as an aside, but I just think this is adorable - check out their shop!  How cute is it for a three-year-old to carry her dolls and blocks and notebooks in a Wuthering Heights tote?!)

 

Crane Drop Shape Cool-Mist Humidifier

Pickle, our 4-5-year-old daughter, gets recurrent croup.  She’s gotten it dozens of times since she turned one, so we’ve sort of done it all.  We’ve stood her in front of the freezer during coughing fits, we’ve stood in a steamy bathroom, we’ve inclined her bed, we’ve done countless rounds of oral steroids and a nebulizer.  All of them have worked in varying degrees to help stem her symptoms after the croup has already started – and it usually starts any time she gets a cold with any sign of a cough.  Per our pediatrician and pulmonologist’s recommendations, we have also utilized a cool-mist humidifier.  We have used it both before symptoms showed up and after the croup has begun in hopes of either preventing or shortening the duration of the illness – studies have shown that cool mist is best for this.

The first time Pickle got croup, we went to Wal-Mart and got the first cool-mist humidifier we saw.  We landed on the Safety 1^st Ultrasonic Humidifier.  Ours is a little older model than this one, it ran about $25:  LINK  We liked that it was ultrasonic, so there was no expensive filter to change – so, even though it was sorta plain and ugly, we figured it was worth it.  It was also pretty quiet, which was nice.  We used it for about a week when we first noticed that it started leaking.  By leaking, I mean it was leaking everywhere from the base, not just some condensation from the spout.  In addition to this electrocution hazard, we also were disturbed that the auto shut-off didn’t work on ours when it ran out of water – I usually would have to get up in the middle of the night to turn it off, rather than risk it overheating.  We continued to use it, but it wasn’t a great solution.

I started doing a lot more research when searching for a new humidifier, as I wanted to get something that would work better and be safer.  I read time and time again about how Crane (www.crane-usa.com) had the best value for their humidifiers.  I was recently lucky enough to get to try out a Crane Drop Shape Humidifier in orchid and white (LINK):

It is adorable, and the pink and white go just perfectly with Pickle’s pink-and-brown bedroom.  However, there are a ton of other colors – prices range from about $40 at retailers like Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart, up to about $55 for the harder-to-find colors.  They are ultra-sleek and modern, and very appealing to my girly-girl.  However, if you have a wee one who wants something a little more traditionally “cute,” check out their Adorable Animals line of humidifiers for the cutest elephants, monkeys, frogs, and more to ever help your children breathe easier.

As it happened, Pickle just happened to come down with a cold within days of when we got the humidifier.  (Lousy Midwest weather.)  As I mentioned before, her colds almost always evolve into croup.  That weekend, we had birthday parties, soccer practice, meetings, and more – the poor girl just didn’t have the time to be down-and-out with respiratory issues.  

We got the Crane humidifier out, and set it up in her room.  First of all, it looks adorable – a vast improvement over the previous humidifier we had.  Although it’s incredibly simple to set up, I recommend following the directions in order to get the best results from your humidifier.  We set it up about three feet off of the ground in order to get the best circulation of air.  Per the directions, we also adjusted the spray so as not to accumulate water at the base – although we put it on a waterproof surface, we really didn’t need to.  There was no leaking or water accumulation – again, we were well ahead of the Safety 1^st model we’d used previously.  It was quiet as a mouse, and it wasn’t big and oppressive in her room.  

One of my favorite features is that the auto shut-off actually worked – I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night and ninja off the humidifier without waking my daughter.  If I hadn’t read the directions, it might have confused me a little bit that the light remained on to indicate that the unit was still receiving power.  The functioning auto shut-off was another big win for me over the previous humidifier!  

One more thing I’d like to note from the instruction manual and the Crane website – no medications are to be used in the unit.  This includes essential oils, if you’re an “oily” house.  There are hacks on YouTube and blogs on how to add oils to the Crane humidifier, but it is not manufactured for use with them and is strongly discouraged.

So… after all of this, I’m sure you’re wondering if starting the Crane humidifier at the onset of Pickle’s cold kept away from the croup.  Well, take a look at this face from that birthday party I mentioned – could a girl with a restricted airway work a trumpet with this much style?

BFFL Co Mommy/Delivery BFFLBag

I was lucky enough recently to get the chance to review the BFFL Co Mommy/Delivery BFFLBag (LINK).  The company has recently been covered in Time magazine, on FOXNews, Huffington Post, and more, so I was really intrigued by their product line.  There is a reason they’ve been covered – co-founder Elizabeth Chabner Thompson, MD, MPH, has a pretty remarkable story.   She completed her residency in Radiation Oncology and has a Master’s in Public Health.  She devoted her career to helping those with cancer after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer – and has even been through a prophylactic double mastectomy and breast reconstruction because of that family history of cancer (think of what Angelina Jolie recently did, and why).  Her brave decisions and personal history, combined with her medical education, have given her a unique perspective on what’s needed during a hospital stay.  Using this wealth of information and experience, BFFL Co has an entire line of recovery products for different surgeries and medical conditions – including this innovative bag for new mothers to take to the hospital.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in my previous posts that I’m currently pregnant, and am always going to be a high-risk pregnancy.  Our first daughter was born still at just 21.5 weeks, and I was on bedrest from 13.5 weeks on with our second daughter.  I have to have a hospital bag ready to go pretty much from the start of the second trimester on forward.  However, with a precocious 3.5-year-old tearing around the house, a full-time job, and trying to make time for my wonderful husband, I don’t have a ton of time to sit down and write out lists for months on end of what needs to go into my hospital bag.  Even if I did, I’d miss something, even having been through all of this before.

So, it’s safe to say I was really excited to see this bag.  I’m sort of a natural skeptic, however, so I was positive that I’d find something that was missing or needed adding.  I can’t think of a single thing missing from this bag.  I literally think you can just put your phone charger in here and head to the hospital.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with uncharacteristic gushing from me, I’ll explain myself.

First things first – BFFL Co includes a designer bag to hold all of the goodies inside.  Much to my delight, this is an adorable bag.  It’s a bag you would actually want to use as a gym bag or an overnight bag after you’ve recovered from emitting a baby from your body by one method or another.  Then, inside, there’s just a TON of stuff.  There’s a heart-shaped Axilla Pilla comfort pillow (good for hugging when you’re trying to ride out a contraction, or for nursing support), flip flops (so you don’t have to pick up a foot fungus along with a newborn), a skin care gift set, Bio-Oil moisturing scar and stretch mark treatment oil, some nursing pads, perineal ice packs and disposable sleeves (if you don’t know why these are included, I don’t think I should be the one to explain it), a collapsible water bottle, some nursing pads (GENIUS, because everyone forgets these and then panic when their milk comes in), and then several separated packets.  These are organized ingeniously – one is for toiletries (including dry shampoo which is especially awesome for those post-op, lip balm, nail care set, tooth care, and more), a wound care/incision pack for if you had a C-section, a packet of fun entertainment stuff (playing cards, notebook, pen, slipper socks, cards, etc.), and a pack that is filled with mesh underwear, pads, and all of that fun stuff.  I skipped over a lot of little individual items in here (ear plugs, etc.) because it literally would take an entire paragraph just to list everything, it’s so chock-full (but packed into a convenient-sized bag).  I had assumed I’d need to add some of that little stuff like lip balm (to which I’m addicted) and nail clippers, but they’re all just right there.  I guess you could add a gown if you didn’t want to wear the hospital garb, but that’s really not a necessity, and those hospital gowns have snaps specifically useful for if you plan to breastfeed.

I know I don’t usually glow this much about a product, but I just really was impressed by how complete it is.  On top of all of that, 15% of the net profits from the purchase are donated to the Harvard School of Public Health Women’s and Health Initiative.  With all of this, not only am I glad that this is going to be going to the hospital with me, but I believe this will start being my go-to shower gift.  I can’t think of a single mom or type of delivery that wouldn’t benefit from this – and there’s even some room in it to take home the diapers that you paid 5x cost for from the hospital room!