Show Us Your Life - Baby Gear

Kelly's Korner is a blog that I read and every Friday she has a new topic for bloggers to share about..."Show Us Your Life Fridays"! This week everyone is sharing favorite baby gear...things they loved, things they hated, things they couldn't have lived without etc! I thought I would get in on it since I definately have some favorite baby items! As I am looking back on all the different things we used there are a few that stand out in my mind as "lifesavers" and I can remember Jason and I wondering many times, out loud, how people can get by without some of them!


1) The first thing to become a necessity in our house was Amelia's "donut". It is actually called a snuggle-me-cushion (found here). My mom found it a craft fair in Minnesota and I am very glad that she got one for us! Amelia spent so much time in her "donut" the first few months of her life. It was a lifesaver to me when I was on my own with her for the first time, still sore from her delivery and unable to move around much. I would put her "donut" on the ottoman, put her in it, take my time sitting down and I was able to get her out of it, to nurse, without too much pain. That alone made it one of my favorite items. She took many naps in it too. We never tried it, but it can also be used for tummytime!

2) Bottles. Since I returned to school and work a short time after having Amelia, nursing didn't last too long for us (she naturally weaned herself) and the search for the perfect bottle began! We like Wee Go glass baby bottles, especially when we were storing breast milk.


Since carrying around glass bottles in a diaper bag can get a bit heavy we also tried out a lot of different plastic bottles. We have found more that we dislike than we like, that is for sure! We like the Nuk bottles and Wal-Mart's Parent's Choice bottles (the cheap ones that cost $0.97) the best, so far.

We never had good luck with Evenflo bottles, in particular the Evenflo Comfit bottles (the ones with the angled neck). The Evenflo Comfit bottles leak like crazy 90% of the time and are such a pain! We still use them but are very careful. You have to screw the lid on just right for no leaks to happen and sometimes, when there is a screaming baby, there just isn't time for all that precision!

3) Bouncer. Amelia loved her bouncer!


We decided on the Fisher Price Precious Planer bouncer. For the longest time her bouncer was the only place she would take a nap! I loved having it because I could put her in it and take it with me wherever I needed to be in the house! It was also really cool when she would start to swat at the "animal friends" hanging over it and then one day she grabbed on of them! I still remember that day, I was really excited :) She used her bouncer from birth until around 5 or 6 months...that is when she started to get upset in it because she wanted to be rolling around!


4) Bumbo seat. Amelia's Bumbo has been a place for her to play, a place for her to eat and also a place for her to pose for pictures! I really loved having this chair for her to play in! I also have the tray for it and I would put that on, give her a few toys and she would usually play for a good length of time. I would, however, have to go and retrieve the toys that she discarded :) One bad thing about the Bumbo was that we didn't get much use out of it, time-wise. After a couple of months Amelia was escaping from it. We still use it now, a few times a week, for feedings mostly. I think that a Bumbo is a good thing to have, even if you only get regular use out of it for a few months.



Those are just a few of the things that we have loved in this house! Other things that we loved, but I won't elaborate on, were our Fisher Price Rainforest Cradle Swing, slings (once Amelia got used to them that is), Cuisinart food processor (for making baby food), Johnson's and Johnson's Moisture stick (Grins and Giggles variety, it is made by J&J, but the "brand" is Grins and Giggles, either way, it did wonders for Amelia's cheeks!) etc

Eating Like a Big Girl

Since Amelia is restless in her Bumbo, I used her highchair for the first time this afternoon! It was mine when I was a baby so it has been around for a long time! She did really well in it! Amelia loves rice cereal now. After she swallows she looks at you and opens her mouth wide as if to say, "more please!"


She was so happy to be eating like a big girl today:


We also tried her sippy cup again and she still isn't liking it much:



I am wondering if it tastes weird to her. I found another sippy cup that has a longer spout and is supposed to help babies transition easier from the bottle to the cup. It is supposed to be more like a bottle than a sippy cup. I am thinking that I might get one of those for her if she doesn't warm up to the one she has soon.

She took a late nap again today. I went in there to check on her and this is how I found her:


(it is so dark because I turned the flash off so I wouldn't wake her)

Morrison also thought it was a good idea to get into her crib and wake her from her nap. This is how I found them:


I don't know about this! I am going to have to keep a close eye on this guy from now on...

We are leaving in the morning to go "home" for the rest of the week. We have to come home earlier than originally planned because Jason is needed at work Saturday, but that is ok. I have been trying really hard to get things done around here tonight before we leave. I have a LOT of stuff packed into the car already...Jason will be happy I think!

I need to get some more cleaning done around here. We are leaving the cats (our neighbor Ellen is watching them for us) so the house will be a mess when we get home regardless of what I do tonight but I am at least going to try. I figure, the cleaner I leave it, it will be that much cleaner when we get home.

See some of you this week!

Jenny Jump Up

We have been debating on getting an exersaucer or jumperoo for Amelia. Our concern is that our house is already sort of jam-packed and those things take up a LOT of room! We decided that we want something that she can practice "standing" in and got a "Jenny Jump Up" at Wal-Mart here. They don't carry them in the stores near our house and we were going to order one, but Jason noticed that there was one here so we got it. Here are some pictures from her first time in it:




I think she had a good time! Perhaps we may still get her and exersaucer at some point but for now this seems like it will be a good way for her to practice "standing".

An Amelia Necessity

Amelia has certain things that she loves. Things like her bouncer and her pacies (pacifiers). A couple of nights ago the batteries on one of her other all-time favorite things died...her bedtime rainforest soother.


We have been to the store once or twice since it died and yet we still have no batteries for it because we forget. It is so hard to put her to bed without it! It plays music and has lights and animals, it runs for 18 minutes and then shuts off. When it works, all you have to do is put her in her crib, give her a paci and hit the start button and she is out like a light within no time. This is the second night in a row where we just cannot get her to go to bed without a "fight". When we finally remember to get batteries, I am getting an extra set so the poor little thing is never without this electronic that it seems she "needs" in her life!

I had a request from my sister to include a funny Amelia picture often...well, I didn't take any pictures today, and couldn't find on e as funny as some of the others, but here is a picture of her from last Sunday, after church:


I am a discussion leader in class on Monday morning...so that means I need to get cracking on all the readings for then earlier than normal because I have to have questions ready for the class to discuss that morning. I am working with a couple other people and we need everything figured out by 7 a.m. Monday so the teacher can photocopy what we come up with for the class, as a handout. There is a lot of reading to do, but I am hoping that it goes fast. We are talking mainly about the draft on Monday, which should be interesting!

ps- Our movie last night was just as terrible as we were anticipating, but it gave us some laughs and for a dollar, a few laughs are just fine!

Baby Bumbo

This afternoon we decided to go to Target and get Amelia her first chair, a Baby Bumbo. We have been talking about getting her one for a couple of weeks now and decided that we should just do it. They are designed to help a baby sit upright before they can do so on their own. She has been doing really well at holding her neck up on her own for longer periods of time lately, which is necessary for her to use the chair. When we got home I put her in it and she generally seemed happy. She did really well. I was so focused on taking a cell phone picture of it that I forgot to take one on a regular camera. We walked Jason to work and when we got home I tried again with the chair and she was just not having it.

She has been pretty crabby today. She got to bed much later than normal last night and got up much ealier than she normally does today. Since she is not fond of napping, by 6 I had a little girl with major crabby pants on. Here are some pictures of her in her chair, sadly none of them include a smile (yet) since I didn't take the camera out today until she was crabby!




Since she was freaking out (as seen 2 pictures up) I stood up and talked to her, looking down at her face. She calmed down a bit then, but not for long :(

In other news, she seems to want to roll over. This morning she did some tummytime off and on and then once we flipped her to her back so we could get ready to go we noticed her doing this:

Jogging Stroller = Assembled

Yesterday morning we went to lunch at Twisted Fork on the East Side. My sister had given us a gift card for there because in my final hours of Amelia's delivery all I could think about was a peppercorn burger from Twisted Fork. As I was pushing her out it was all I could think of (I mean, I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, food in general sounded great) besides meeting our baby. Once I was in recovery I decided to eat hospital food at first because I was afraid to gorge myself on said burger. It was good yesterday, as always.

Before I left for work, Jason set to work assembling the jogging stroller. We were pleasantly suprised that it was fairly simple to assemble. It took him less than a half an hour. We were a little worried since REI typically does the assembly for you. I did point out that had we ordered it directly from Phil and Ted's, we would have had to assemble it ourselves anyways, so it should be easy (and it was). Here is a picture of him working on it (I took it because I liked the fact that all 3 cats were in the room with him. At this point they had given up "helping" and were just hanging around):


Before I left I put Amelia in the stroller and snapped a quick picture of her in her new ride:


What a big girl she is becoming!

While I was at work, Jason took her on a test drive in her stroller. He took a few pictures once they were outside and ready to go:


(yes, those are headphones hanging from the top. Jason likes to make sure Amelia has tunes when she is out and about. On this outing she listened to the Rolling Stones, Beggar's Banquet)


Poopy has already taken a strong liking to the new stroller, more than once we caught him in the basket (in fact, he was in it pretty much before it was even done being assembled):


We now have three, yes three, strollers in our stairwell. We have our regular stroller, a cat stroller and now the jogging stroller. When we come home from shopping trips it can get difficult to get everything upstairs with all the obstacles! Oh well. I'm glad we have the stairwell to store these things in, can you imagine all the strollers piled into our apartment? Eeek!