Review: Step 2 Doorway Playhouse

It’s the Step 2 Doorway Playhouse and it gets 4 big thumbs up from us. This unit is around $220 AUD in stores though if you look carefuly you can get them cheaper. Ours was $149 AUD from www.playdex.com.au and arrive the next business day. This one is worth every cent.

It takes only minutes to set up and only a few more if like me you have dismantled one side of a playpen and set the door up at the front with your Dora Kitchen inside like a little house.

This one is a big winner. It can be used in a doorway or stand alone, whichever works for you and the little mail slot is great for posting things inside.

Crayola TaDoodles

These are fun and easy for your toddler to hold. Crayola have come up with a new “Beginnings” line aimed directly at toddlers and young kids. The Line includes a washable set, a bath set, markers, stamps and a few others.

Here is Oz they are around $14 or so and just fantastic. Buy your baby a hard cover note book and let them draw (or scribble) a few times a week, then you can watch them get better and better throughout the book.

Crayon Buddies are cool, fun and easy for little hands to hold, and surprisingly very difficult for big hands to hold. That should keep big borther, sister or.. Dad from taking over your toddlers artistic designs.

Villeroy & Boch Meow Wowwow

I know what you’re thinking, this may be one of the ugliest designs as far as “cute kids” things go that ever existed. I know.. the one I have is Yelow with dogs and not much better. However, this my fellow mess clean-er-upper-ers, is genius.

It’s called a thermal cup from Villeroy & Boch and this design is the “Meow Wowwow” though it does come in a few other designs at around $25 – $35.

Here’s the thing though… it doesn’t spill. Fill it with water or juice for the kids or use as a saftly cup when you’re on your sixth or seventh glass of wine for you, either way, tip it, shake it, rattle it, open it or close it.. you won’t get more than a drop out of it unless you mean to.

They also make a few similarly designed cups for kids which we will be test driving shortly but this one is a winner and perfect for the car or dinner or any of those times when you need an extra hand to prevent a spontanious flood of upturned drink. The Meow Wowwow is for you.. and lets face it, addivtive to say.

Bibs: No, They Aren’t All The Same

Throughout your pregnancy and then baby gifts, you will have now accumulated a decent amount of bibs. Let me start this by saying even though this looks like enough for 30 children, it won’t be enough for your one. Unfortunately to a new parent it can take a while before you know which ones are shit and which ones are worth using. Lets cut that wait time right out for you and tell it like it is.

Shit bibs:

Little short cutesy ones are bad because they will end up everywhere but where you want baby to be covered. They act as more of a spreader than a protector.

Bibs that do up right behind the head. Crap! Babies move a lot and being about to velcro something in place on the side of the neck is 100 times easier than the back of their head.

Fabric bibs, they look cool but most of them time they are made out of fun material that just lets everything roll down the front of it,absorbing nothing and landing on your babies pants instead. They just transport the food from one location to another and don’t save anything.

Not Shit Bibs:

Pull over bibs… YAY! Yes your child will pull a face when you start putting them on, but that little elastic material that fits around the neck is the perfect balance between not chocking baby and sealing that gap where food escapes down the back of the bib (more frequently that you ever thought possible).

Big giant ones! They look enormous and most likely will scare you off for a while because they are the same size as your child but it takes a few months to realise, this is what you want! Maximum coverage and they CAN come in cute designs.

Really soft ones are usually great for absorbing liquid. What you want is a material that turns a darker colour when wet that way you know the drool or milk or food, is really getting caught in there. Most of the ones that don’t do this, even a little are just going to let what ever your trying a avoid, roll down the front.

So which ones do you buy?

Big Softies, I know this is a tiny picture but it’s the best I can find after an hour of googling. Can you believe “googling” is a verb now? Anyway, you can find them in Woolworths, Target, Kmart.. etc.. Everywhere. They are cheap and excellent. Get the pullover long ones and you will be happy as Larry.. especially since Larry’s baby will be very clean.

The Case Of The Flap-Around Arms

The day your baby was born, the midwives showed you how to swaddle your baby to help them feel comforted and sleep better. What they didn’t show you, was the “don’t get too comfortable, this won’t last for long” disclaimer. Before you have time to click your heels twice and say “how can nappies be so expensive”, your baby wants to move.. Maybe not for the big night sleeps but for day naps, your controlled method of wrap-and-drift-into-dreamland is done and dusted.

It’s a set of moves so wild and uncoordinated, one can only assume it’s the infant macarena. (Alternatively you could compare the macarena to what an infant looks like when they have just discovered they have these arm things attached to them, but aren’t sure how to use them.. A whole different post all together.)

You put them down for a sleep. They are sleepy eyed, covered, calm… you walk away. Five minutes later you creep in to check on them and it’s a whole different story. Covers are off and under the baby now (who knows how…), Legs are in the air, a foot and a finger are in the mouth (obviously couldn’t find the thumb this time and figured any of them would do). Dummy is on the floor, spat (or thrown) through the tiny spaces of the cot and now half way across the room. From shoulders to eyes and everywhere in between, baby now glistens with drool. And last but not least, baby has learn how to turn on her own soother.

The short version, sleep isn’t happening. So where do you go from here? With the number one culprit being those tiny little fingers that have just worked out how to remove the dummy but not put it back in, I recommend a pair of socks.. I’m talking about thin ones that will stay on. The trick is, you put them on their hands so those squirmy wormy fingers don’t get in the way. Watch as they try to get those fingers under the rim of the dummy, but can’t! I dare you not to laugh through an evil grin that says, I’ve got your number now kiddo!

Next for the arms themselves, you can start by doing kind of a reverse swaddle, put a thin wrap under baby then put their arms behind the wrap on each side, then fold the wrap around the arm and back under neath them using their body weight to keep it in place. This will end up looking as though your baby is wearing patterned gloves till their arm pits but hey, whatever works right?

Take this opportunity to start gathering ammunition for baby’s 21st birthday party. Photos.

This will keep the arms not still but unable to flee around with such ease that they can hit themselves in the head 5 times a minute. Gradually you can loosen the wrap bit by bit by bit and then remove it all together. When you think your baby is ready to graduate from hand socks, try something that she can hang on to instead. Choose something that she can breath through in case she presses it against her face, not too small to swallow and not to big to get wrapped around her. We have a small pink teddy that is just one sheet of material in the middle, works perfectly.

At some point your baby will discover that these arms and fingers can be controlled, fingers up the nose, in the ear, up your nose, in your ears.. the list never ends. Enjoy these things, because I am told that the time will come where I will be longing for the days when she was so easily amused. I am not too sure about that myself, I can’t say I am picturing a time when I will look back and wish i had those little sticky baby vomit fingers digging their nails into my unsuspecting nasal passage all over again. But, if you hang around long enough, I’ll let you know if I do.

If you do catch baby resembling anything below, please go and invest in a stretchy pair of hand socks immediately. Your swaddle time is running out!

Baby Zone Direct

Well it’s about time I pay my respects to the Baby store I mention to regularly. Granted they have taken my money by the thousands, but someone had to and at Baby Zone Direct, they are just the best people I have come across in this expensive world we call baby.

There are a million stores out there, but if you are in Australia and especially New South Wales, check out Baby Zone Direct, it’s worth the drive.

Click Here to Visit Baby Zone Direct

Catalog Danger

It turns up at your door and flirts with you in the middle of the day when your partner isn’t home. It’s seductive and relentless and known for it’s tempting ways. It get’s to you, infiltrating your weaknesses and sparking your excitement.

 

It’s… the catalog.

 

It was this tiny little ad above that sucked me in. I saw it in the K mart catalog this week and thought gee that looks good. I was sucked in by it’s cuteness and Winnie the pooh.. SO I decided to go and buy it. Big mistake.

 

I arrived at Kmart at 10am.. they only opened at 9am and I went to little little Westfield nearby instead of the bigger ones to avoid any crowds. I get there and we have to park all the way at the back of the parking lot because there are people lined up for spots everywhere. I get inside and it’s like the easter show and Disneyland and the supermarket on Christmas Eve combined.. Seems that my new frame of mind where I skip over everything accept the baby section saw me conveniently miss the massive sign on page one that had 25% off all clothing store wide… eh.

 

Now I am not a people person at the best of times. I am the kind of woman who sees no problem doing Christmas shopping with a tazer and the ‘elbows out’ philosophy. Boy was this not the place for me.. there were people everywhere and suddenly I knew that my fight for a parking spot was only the beginning.

 

From here, I have two choices. I can leave, auction off my parking spot to the highest and most desperate bidder and leave in vein but slightly richer.. or, I can stay, get what I need (and possibly more) and make it home before midnight. What to do, what to do..? I saw someone walk to the checkout to join the queues with my pooh outfit. The fact that the queues were battling the great wall of china for length escaped me.. and I simply had to have what I came for. Since this checkout woman was protected by a community of her own children crash tackling her was out of the question so I trekked further and further into the black hole of the unknown.

 

Finally arriving at the baby wear section, after a slight detour past the women’s section.. and women’s change room and shoes… I’m confronted by thousands of mothers with strollers very unwilling to budge so I can get through. I am still in the newborn phase of stroller navigating.. I still offer courtesy smiles when I am in the way.. putting myself in an awkward position to save others.. and so on. Apparently most women hit a point where they think the world owes them something and screw anyone who gets in their way. So I wait, and wait and wait while other people clogg the aisles and push past each other, knocking things off the shelves as they go. After a while it kicks-in that I am just going to have to go for it. I adopt the uncertain approach of ‘my pram is bigger than yours’ and go for it. I reach my Romper outfit and grab it in two sizes because you can bet your boots, I ain’t doing this again.

 

The checkout is a whole other blog post, so is the part where we come out with bags and bags, it’s raining and I am running across the rooftop car park with baby, pram, shopping and end up in the car wetter than if i’d had a shower or two. I’ll spare you from it and jump to my conclusion.

Unless you are looking for something or need something.. DO NOT.. I repeat.. DO NOT bother looking through the catalogs that come to your mailbox. Everytime you circle something in them, the company who sent them is rubbing their hands together and thanking their lucky stars that technology hasn’t yet exhausted the cheaper-than-ever mailbox-drop avenue of marketing. If you DO in fact look through them and find something you like.. read the rest of the damn booklet and make sure there is not some huge, crowd drawing sale that you will inevitably become a part of because the $16.95 isn’t all it will cost you.

 

 

Disposable Vs. Cloth

I was one of these people who thought before the baby came that they would be using cloth nappies when possible, saving time, money and energy (both mine and the planet’s). But, like most preconceived ideas, after Lily came along, it became very obvious where I was going wrong. I figured out that it’s not a lie, babies do go through close to ten nappies a day and some of them are so messy it’s a toss up whether or not to use the $30 worth of baby wipes you just bought (which is about 5 of them by the way) or to just get out the hose and ask your husband to hold the kid out in the back yard.

 

But why not a bit of both? The trick to this decision is to buy both of them in advance because there will be an application for both. If your looking for a suggestion, I’d go with disposables on her bum, easy, quick, cheap and compared to having to do all that laundry as well as the mountain she gives me already? Nightmarish…

 

Disposable nappies go on their bum and the cloth nappies are a god-send for just about everything else. Bath time, burp time, feeding time, sitting up after feeding time, spew time.. the works. They even triple as a good kitchen tea towel if you are struggling for a use; although I am sure you won’t be. These things are fabulous for everything. Even when you just want to let them get their gear off and have a naked kick around, just whack one of these down first.

 

Do yourself a favor and save the good things you have in the cupboard from becoming baby spew towels and get some cloth nappies, they are designed to get dirty and wet and washed a million times after all. Your Ralph Lauren Polo that you’ll grab in a pinch if you have to on the other hand, was not.

Ode to the Onesie

Before we have babies, playing dress up sounds like the most fun in the world. Friends and family are buying you sailor outifts and fairy wings, left right and centre, and you have enough money to be chipping-in for a few unnecessary tiny outfits of your own.

Then, we have the baby. Suddenly we can’t even keep one tiny sock on the kid, and looking in the wardrobe just isn’t as exciting as it used to be. Your eye runs past all the things you were waiting to try on your little one and goes straight to the magic of baby wear. The Onesie. The Onesie is a gift, given to us by the gods of convenience and sponsored by the friends and board members of the anti-suicide board. It comes with a flawless design, and comes with a 75% less head-against-wall hitting guarantee. Someone needs to add to the pre parenthood manual with “Clothing – Maximum 3 studs!” all with a page of it’s own for emphasis.
Reason’s we love the Onesie:

• It’s all in one piece, which means it goes on and comes off faster and doesn’t need to move anywhere to change a nappy.
• It has three studs and is easy to do up when you have tiny arms and legs waving around like they just don’t care.
• It stays down!! Meaning that whatever your activity, eating, sleeping, playing, even ‘flying baby’, will leave your baby still looking respectable, and not like she’s wearing a seven layer scarf and matching socks.
• They are usually iron free! When you have a baby, the word “ironing” might as well be Pakistani for “spaghetti” because if someone said it to you, you’d reply, “huh?”

The good rule of thumb here is save outfits for big occasions. Day in day out?.. Buy 10 different weather appropriate onesies  and save yourself the pain of a four layer baby outfit that by the time you get it all on, it needs to all comes off again.

The Poop vs Fart Conspiracy

Which is it? Thing is, even if you think you know, you have to check just in case. This is a time when a good box of nappies that can be sealed and re-sealed is a must. Although, that being said, I can’t recall a single time in seven and a half weeks when I have checked my girls nappy, even minutes after it has been freshly put on her, when it hasn’t had at least one wee in it. So I don’t know who these lucky bastards who are checking, getting nothing, and leaving them on are. If I find one of them, I think it only fair they pay for a portion of my nappy costs in the interests of unofficial parenting communism.

So, you hear the noise, feel the popping feeling that we all know could mean anything from, ‘look mummy, I can fart’ to ‘oh mummy.. you need to change my nappy, and my pants, and your shirt and then you might want to wash your arm off.’ Which is it? I look for indications on her face but I get nothing.. I would say if I combine the facial expression results from all those recorded I would find equal numbers of pride and upset faces for both candidates. One thing I do know for sure is that this is one conundrum that certainly can’t be pin pointed on the basis of smell. Some of the non poop ones are the worst smell-wise and could clear a room with a single giggle and pop. – No snap required.

In summer, this problem is not so bad, a singleted two stud onesie and your done, but in winter.. well crap. You have the blankets, and extra socks, the bottom half of the jumpsuit onesie and then the nappy, but with the added gauntlet of your baby getting cold and making an impromptu performance that could contain a lucky dip of outcomes. The best of which being everything gets wee on it and your baby needs to be stripped, cleaned and the process started again.. At worst it could require the bathing of both you and your kid, as well as some sort of carpet scrubbing. And if your really unlucky, all at about 3am on a Tuesday morning in about 10 degrees Celsius, (conversion: fucking-cold-for Australian’s degrees Fahrenheit) The insult to this injury is when the poop you were looking for in the first place turned out to be just another fart and all of this was avoidable.

Wee is easy.. I know when my little schmoopa has wee’d because the front of her nappy changes in feel from a paper towel feel to more of a magic play dough wrapped in paper towel feel. But she still seems to stump me time and time again with the other. When will I grow into an experienced parent who can tell the difference?

And they say there is no mystery in the world anymore…

Photos.. Don’t do it

Something I wish someone had told me before today. I should have known to be honest but it just doesn’t occur to you really until your doing it. When your home, alone, tired and looking and feeling like a mess, under no circumstances think this is a good time to look at old photos of yourself. It will not end well.. My breasts were higher, my face was thinner, I was lighter, nicer hair, more time to do my hair, nicer, smaller clothes.. less stretch marks.. it won’t end. Don’t let it begin.

Thing is, you will feel like this ANYWAY, but seeing them, eh it sparks something else that makes you feel like shit. All of a sudden the day time infomercials for lap band surgery don’t seem so out of reach and their payment plan really does sound reasonable. Most likely, for the moment,you will swear off food, vow to exercise and throw out all the junk food in your house.

Old pictures of you and your partner = water and celery diet that won’t last making you feel even worse.

Don’t do it to yourself.