Tommee Tippee sippy cups

Whenever I am home with the little man, we breastfeed.  However, as a working mother, I have to pump while I am at work, and he has to drink expressed milk at daycare.

I did a ton of research before investing in bottles.  I searched the internet high and low for bottles that were the most compatible with nursing babies - lots and lots of "top five" and "top ten" lists.  There is a lot of variation, but the most consistent bottle brand I saw listed was Tommee Tippee.  They had them at our local Target in stock, so that's what we've used since Peanut went to daycare.  He's done great with them, but he's nine months now.  He's very, very active, and is starting to resist the bottle.  This is strange, as his sister, who also nursed, probably would have stuck with a bottle until she was three if we'd allowed it to happen.

I again did research, and found that Tommee Tippee was the top name in sippy cups for nursing babies.  I got lucky enough to get to try a few of their cups!  Here is their website for sippy cups:  LINK 

First we tried the 6m+ First Straw Transition cup (LINK):

It comes in a wide range of colors.  It's just the right size for a 6-month-old to use for practice - Peanut was easily able to hold the handles (which are also removable).  He did well with the straw, and loved putting it in his mouth.  He sort of understood the process, but I had a feeling that he'd do better with a spout.  (We've since come back to the straw with much more success!)

Luckily, we also had a 7m+ Trainer Sippee Cup (LINK). 

Again, they are just adorable.  The handles were very easy to use, but Peanut prefers to hold it like a bottle, so we removed them:

It's very hard to get a good shot of this little man these days just because he's a blur of activity, but he loves this sippy.  He began by drinking water out of it, but he's transitioned at daycare to also drinking breast milk out of it.  This has been great for many reasons.  It gives him more control over his eating experience than he had when the teachers had to give him a bottle, and it teaches him autonomy.  It's also a good transition away from the bottle that he would need to make at the daycare center we use at the time he moves to the 1-year-old toddler room.  

The cup itself is also wonderful.  It's BPA-free, which is important to me.  The spout is rubber, which he loves to chew on while he's hardcore-teething.  This style does not seem to leak at all, which is a big bonus to me since he likes to keep it nearby while playing.  It's also incredibly easy to wash, since the entire top is just one piece.  It's been a wonderful trainer cup for us.

We have not yet transitioned to the 9m+ Sippee Cup (LINK), but I am excited to do so.  There is a higher capacity for fluid in there, which will be nice as Peanut begins drinking more fluids.  The lids seem like they would be swappable with the 7m+ trainer cups, so I am also glad that I will have more options.  All of the Tommee Tippee cups are dishwasher-safe, so they are wonderful options for our family-on-the-go.

In short, I would highly recommend the Tommee Tippee line of sippy cups.  For our little man who is pretty attached to Mama, these have been an easy transition from the bottle and to a little more freedom.  We will definitely be using these long-term - and further exploring the Tommee Tippee line as he grows into toddlerhood!

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

Kiddopotamus Tinydiner Placemat

I've sort of belabored my hatred of germs (HERE), so I don't feel that I really need to go into a big long spiel again.  When Little A was just learning to eat, we mostly did baby-led weaning, where she fed herself.  Great for teaching hand-to-mouth coordination, allows the baby to lead the way on how much they would like to eat - and is easier for lazy parents!

Because of that, going out to eat at restaurants was a little bit of a situation.  I worked as a waitress in the past - I know that most places just put a rag in some already-dirty water and wipe off a table with it.  I don't know if there's been a Mythbusters on this or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are more germs on the table after it's been wiped down than before.  Other places will use bleach water - which is great in theory, except when your child is going to put their food down when the table is potentially still wet.  Eating bleach doesn't sound like an awesome idea for a 9-month-old, but I'm not a gastroenterologist, don't quote me.

Anyway.  We were at Babies 'R Us, and found this item -- which instantly means I got it for about a 40% markup (LINK):

When it's unfolded, it is about 18 inches wide - the sides and top flap fold up to make it fit a little easier in a diaper bag or such.  It's pretty thick plastic, and wipes down very easy.  That little jobby down at the bottom that looks like a pencil case is a little cup area that catches the inevitable food that falls out of baby's mouth.  (It also catches baby barf, which is both a positive and negative.)

What I liked best about this is that it also has suction cups on the back (on each of the flaps) that keep it on the table even when your little one sweeps their arm back and forth on the table or grabs at it.

We used the heck out of it - we used to try and go to breakfast a couple of times a month with my parents, in addition to other trips, and so it got a ton of use:

(Those are hash browns, in case anyone is wondering what the heck we're feeding her.)

After a while it didn't fold up quite as nicely, but the suction cups still made it a lot more useful than the little plastic placemats that you can get that just lie on the table.  Plus, I liked that it was reusable, it seemed more environmentally-friendly.

We don't use it anymore now that Little A is fine eating off of a plate, but it was well worth $9.  I would throw it in the dishwasher for a deep clean, it was super-easy.  It was a bit bulky in the diaper bag, even folded up and then with some additional rolling, so I guess it really depends on how big your diaper bag is and how crazy you are about germs.  My answers to those were "huge" and "lots."  

Dr. Brown's Microwave Sterilizer

Sometimes I feel it's fair to preface a post with a disclaimer on my level of crazy.  It's just fair to let someone going in know from where my actions and opinions are formed.  It's a service I provide.

So, I'm a little weird about germs.  And by "little," I mean that I hate the shopping cart with the fiery passion of a million suns.  There are somehow more poop germs on the shopping cart you use at the grocery store than there probably are in all of your bathrooms in your house combined - you know, the same shopping cart on which you put your hands, and some babies try to suck the handles.  And I just want to know how all of these poop germs got there.  I mean, I don't necessarily actually want to know the specifics, but is there a hand or some other item acting as a middleman?  This disturbs me on levels that I can't explain.  When I was pregnant with Little A, I used so much hand sanitizer that I got little blisters on my fingers.  (In my defense, my immune system is terrible from previous health issues.  But still.)

So, let's keep that all in mind.  I know I couldn't prevent all germs from reaching her, but I felt like I could control the majority of the items she put in her mouth (at least for a while, until she started putting everything she could reach in there).  I wanted to keep bottle nipples, the bottles themselves, and binkies all sanitized and sterile, as free from germs as possible.  Because, as we all know, I'm pretty sure that all pacifiers actually look like this if you look at them close up:

So, I did some research.  When Little A was little, my husband worked second shift (from 2 to 10 p.m.) and I worked early (7 a.m. to 4 p.m.) so that we could minimize daycare needs.  This meant that we were both a little short-handed and didn't have a ton of time to sterilize bottles, binkies, and nipples on the stove.  We found the perfect solution - the Dr. Brown's Microwave Sterilizer (LINK):

It runs about $24 on Amazon, runs full price around $33 at BabiesRUs.  Basically, you put X number of ounces into the bottom of the sterilizer, put all of your already-washed stuff you want to sterilize on the tray, and pop it into your microwave for the specified amount of time (in accordance with the wattage of your microwave).  For us, this was about two minutes, and we had a whole tray full of sterilized bottles, binkies, and nipples all ready to go!  No more dead bugs and hair and germs on the bottles, no germs from the dishwasher or sink left over, sparkly clean and bacteria free!

I should provide a safety clause here.  They provide those tongs for a reason.  You're gonna go ahead and burn the crap out of your finger if you try and grab something out of there without giving it a few minutes to cool down first.  We would usually take it out of the microwave, take the lid slightly off, and let it cool for about five minutes before starting to put stuff away.  We'd actually usually only get out items that needed to be used immediately, though, because they are all pretty damp - anything that wasn't needed immediately would sit in there overnight to dry off.  This was partially because I was lazy and didn't want to dry everything, and partially because I felt like using either a towel or a paper towel on a newly-sanitized item sort of undid everything we had just accomplished by introducing germs back on there.  That's sort of defeating my desired end game.

So, anyway - I really, really liked this item.  We used it up until Little A was almost a year (which is, if I estimate correctly, about 11 months longer than normal people sterilize stuff).  I will admit that I have done the total gross Mom thing when out and about and we only had one "bee-boo" (A's word for her binky) where I put it in my mouth and "cleaned" it if it fell, and then gave it to her.  THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA, DON'T DO THIS.  Adults can transfer their decay-causing saliva to their infants and cause their teeth to sort of rot (LINK) - I mean, this will probably happen as soon as they start kissing when they hit puberty if their kissing partner's parents shared saliva with them, so you're really only buying yourself about a decade or whatever, but still.  That is my tooth PSA for the day.

Value:  Between $24 and $33.  For me, using this every 1 to 3 days for a year, it was a very good investment.  If you're able to exclusively breastfeed without having to pump, or don't think you'll sterilize for that long, you may want to consider how much you'll use it first.  

Child entertainment level:  Not applicable.

Practicality:  I think this was incredibly practical for us, as we were essentially two single parents who happened to be married, didn't have time to sterilize on the stove, but I was still crazy about germs.  It didn't take up much room, was easy to use, and was not costly.  10/10 for us.

Sippy cups

Even though A breastfed into toddlerhood, we still had to have a system to deliver milk and (later) water into her little belly.  Bottles were the obvious choice when she was little, but we preferred not to send her to preschool on a bottle.  So, we had to find a sippy cup system that worked for us.

The issue with average sippy cups is that she had difficulty getting it tilted up high enough to get the water at the bottom when she was super-little (even though she'd had it down with bottles?  I don't get it, either).  I researched a bit, and found a pretty decent solution - the Tilty Cup (LINK).  Basically, it has a diagonal shelf that divides the cup in two in a way that's pretty ingenious - it keeps the fluid high so that the child only has to lift the class part-way to get out their tasty drink.  The problem?  It looks sort of like this when you set it down (except I think the spout is actually on the other side - anyway):

That would be copious amounts of milk (our milk really isn't that color - usually) spraying out the top and landing all over the table, floor, your lap, whatever.  My daycare provider at the time wasn't the world's biggest fan of this one.  So, I'd say we used it for about three weeks, just until A understood the concept of tilting her cup.  Since they're roughly $28 for two of them regularly (although we found a sale on Amazon), this was not a stellar deal.  I'd probably only go this route if you don't mind your house looking like a dairy exploded all over it.  It was useful, but not $28 useful.

Next we went to a NUK sippy cup with a soft spout, because A was so used to nursing or bottles that she really needed that soft spout.  Here's a LINK and a photo, they run between $5.99 and $9.99:

These were pretty great, she had two handles onto which she could hold.  Here's a photo of her at just over a year, able to navigate this with a broken arm (that was terrible, by the way):

Again, I'd say the cost at the upper end was a little extravagant for a drinking cup that will, at some point, be used as a throwing apparatus.  It worked for what we needed it to do, though.  The issue with this, again, was leaking due to the soft spout.  A wanted some chocolate milk in one of these today, and it got ALL over her and her adorable little elephant chair - and she's three years old now, much better motor skills.  So it's not like this gets better over time.

Within, say, three months or so, she was ready for a hard-spout cup.  We are big fans of the Playtex insulator cups.  We have approximately 70 that look like this:

At $7.99 for two, they're the cheapest of all I've listed.  We get a ton of use out of these.  They don't leak, they don't break when they're dropped/pitched out of the car, they have a hard spout that is durable and cleans easily.  Here's A making a princess picnic, you can see her pink drank there in the midst of her fanciness (please note that the doll in the highchair at the bottom is apparently eating cookies and fuzzy pom poms):

Really, the only downside to these occurs if you happen to, say, leave one full of milk in the hot car for a couple of days, and you maybe only find it because of its smell.  Not that such an instance would ever happen.  Here's how the inside of one of these lids looks (the little plastic dealy comes out):

Now picture that plastic thing all caked in nasty, rotten, putrid milk.  Appetizing, right?  It washes out okay, but it always just seems a little funky to me.  I think maybe there's a way you can buy replacements of these, I just haven't found it quickly offhand - but honestly, at $4.99 for one or $7.99 for two, they're not terrible to just replace if they're too awful.  

With a future child, I'd probably skip the Tilty Cup and maybe even the NUK, and go for a MAM Learn-to-Drink cup (LINK).  I'm a big fan of MAM (that's a different blog post), and that is a learning sippy that is spill-proof.  They're also a little skinnier at the middle than some of the others, which is wonderful for tiny, pudgy little infant/toddler hands.  Once that's outgrown, we'd probably stick with the Playtex Insulated.  Hopefully we reproduce more girls, since pretty much everything we own is pink.  

Graco Blossom 4-in-1 Highchair

For some reason, I was under the impression that we needed a high chair the minute the baby was born - even though we delayed solids until A was 6 months, and we were, you know, nursing.  I don't know if I pictured her sitting in her little high chair and me leaning over her face to nurse her?  I'm sure that wouldn't have traumatized her for life.

So, I looked around on Babies R Us - which, coincidentally, is almost the most expensive place you can buy anything.  There are a very few things that are exclusive to them, but you can get pretty much anything on Earth at Amazon, so I don't know why I thought that was a good idea.  Digression aside, I did a bunch of research on all of their models, and chose the Graco Blossom 4-in-1 Highchair (LINK).

This was not the cheapest chair on the market at around $180.  But I looked at it closely, and it grows with the child.  It works as a traditional high chair for when you need it (and have room):

If you don't have room for the whole high chair, or want to take it to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma's or something and the base won't fit in the back of your Volvo, you can use it as an infant feeding booster by just yanking it off the bottom:

We passed that stage and are currently in the toddler booster, and then will eventually go to a youth chair:

 

So, anyway.  There's also a video about how it works that you can watch on the Babies R Us site, I think, if you're that weird into researching (like I am).  

Our old townhouse was tiny.  Three floors, so each floor was pretty small, and the bottom floor was really just useless square footage set up as the entry way.  We had a dining room, but it wasn't practical, so we'd end up rolling the highchair into the living room a good portion of the time and having to eat there.  Not ideal, and we've rectified that since moving, but it's what was functional.  We ended up using the high chair a lot - A would eat in there, but we'd also use it to make cookies (I'd just put some tin foil down on the topper thing and let her have at rolling them), and we'd also use it for crafts.  When we got snowed in for about a week around Christmas this past year and had no actual craft paper at home, here's a picture of A using glitter paint on cardboard with Q-tips in lieu of paintbrushes (which we also didn't have).  That's horribly jank, but at least she's adorable (please excuse the clutter due to limited space and cabin fever):

So, it was a good purchase for us.  The booster is working for us well, since our girl has a long torso it's the perfect height for our dining room table.

Around 1.5 years, A got rotavirus, even after being vaccinated.  It was terrible, just barf everywhere for days, I felt so terrible for her (until of course we caught it, then we all just felt terrible period).  We'd think she was doing great, she wouldn't vomit for almost 24 hours, so we'd give her food, and then she'd barf again.  Twice this happened in the high chair.  My note on cleaning barf off of this high chair is that it's terrible.  Straight-up terrible.  There are a lot of little crevices down by the butt area, and the straps were the worst.  I cleaned and sanitized them, but they smelled like puke for three weeks.  So, if your child is a puker, you may want to put him/her in a poncho or something before using this car seat. 

Also, this chair is heavy.  You're most likely not free-lifting this thing to move it without throwing out your damn back.  Also, if you stub your toe on it, you will possibly break that toe.  My husband did once, and I've had some pretty awesome swelling.  So, I guess the good news is that it's stable and not going to drop your child on the floor or anything.

Value:  Around $180, depending on retailer.  That's a little hefty, but if you look at it as a highchair plus a booster plus a chair, all of which you may or may not have to buy individually, it's not terrible.  They may have similar 4-in-1 systems now, as I purchased this three years ago.
Child entertainment level:  Not really relevant, but A was comfortable enough to fall asleep on occasion.
Practicality:  I'd say 9/10.  It's a little bulky, which brings it down a point, but it can be fitted to so many situations that I think it's a pretty solid purchase.