Rock-a-Bye Bye big ”ugly” swings

(a baby swing that doesn’t take up much space, doesn’t waste batteries, and looks good to boot!?)

I have a question. Why do such little people as infants need such large accessories? And why must they all be colored in crazy shades of Pastel or covered with various prints of giant animals, often with larger than normal eyes or heads, lol?

Anyone who has had or worked with children knows that some form of an automated baby swing/ rocker is a must if you want to get any sleep or any housework done with an infant. With JT we were blessed to have someone give us their Graco Swing. I still remember at the time saying “This is too huge for our apartment” and my husband countering “we will find a place for it, because we will need it.” Boy was he right. For the first month we had JT home I was suffering from a severe allergic reaction to the drugs they gave me at the hospital, and I had a hard time sleeping even when JT would finally go to sleep. So it was even worse when I would finally be able to find sleep and a crying/fussy newborn would wake me. If it wasn’t for that swing, I think I may have died of exhaustion. There were times when it was the only thing that would keep him calm and allow mom to catch some Z’s too.

With Ry on the way, we really do not have the room for the big Graco anymore, which we donated to the sitter. We needed to find something much smaller. Now there is actually a rather large selection of small baby swings that sit close to the ground and even fold up nicely. In come my other criteria. If something is going to sit out in my living room or dining room or really anywhere in my house, I would really like it to go with my house. When I come home from a long hard day at work, there is a certain peace that I find in entering a (Fairly) clean home. My husband and I have worked hard and saved and budgeted and purchased furniture piece by piece over the last few years for our place until we finally pulled it together into an atmosphere we both love and appreciate. Now I love my children, but after all the time and effort we put into finally having nice, matching furniture, the last thing I want to do is throw in some over the top colored or cheesily decorated piece of baby furniture. If I want to set up Ry’s swing in our living room, why can’t it match our décor? I scoured the web and finally broke my selection down to a few choices:

1) Bright Stars Comfort and Harmony Portable Swing, Biscotti Baby

2) Fisher-Price Starlight Papasan Cradle Swing

3) 4 moms Mamaroo Infant Seat, Silver

We had some Criteria to compare each swing with:

1) It would be nice if it didn’t need batteries. How many batteries do we waste on kid’s toys? Rechargeable batteries are worth the investment, but expensive. Plus I have been there where your baby is wailing away in the background while you, stressed from the lack of sleep and wailing baby, are scouring the house to find fresh/charged batteries.

2) Something that looks a little more modern or at least aesthetically pleasing. Our furniture is black leather. Our coffee table is dark wood with chrome legs. Our entertainment stand is Glass and Chrome. Surely there must be a simple Black and Silver/Gray swing out there that can soothe the baby yet look tasteful sitting in our living area.

3) Small Small Small. We don’t have much free space, and I like to try to keep floor areas open so there is room to move and play. I don’t want something that is going to be large and in the way. Plus, It should be easily carried from room to room if need be. I am hoping to keep it primarily in the living room, but what if I want to move it to a bedroom, or take it on a trip?

We read tons of reviews and looked at what we could in person, but admittedly, since I saw the first youtube video of this thing in action; I was in love with the MamaRoo. My husband really loved the overall the look of the swing (My best friend calls it a “Baby SpaceShip”). It reclines into several positions from laying down to sitting up. It has several different swing/sway movements. (Including “Car Ride” J ) It plugs into the wall. It is compact. It is available in several simple color combinations. I like the nice black and gray for my living room, which even has colored balls on a mobile where the sides facing the baby are bright colors and sides facing up that you see when you walk into the room are black and gray. Finally, it has a built in speaker that can play either pre- recorded background noises, or your MP3 player. It got a mix of reviews. Many people said it was perfect for their child, while others complained it moved to slow for theirs.

At first I wasn’t sure about the comments of it being too slow. Then I had nursery duty at church. We had two big swings there and with both had constant problems with even the “low” settings moving too fast for the newborns. After watching the regular swings on low with their fast jerky movements, I was willing to take my chances on a more gentle motion.

For the final review of this product, only Ry can tell us. I’ll come back to this when he’s here to let you know his take. So far I love it, and JT likes turning it on and off. (I foresee this being a problem, lol) It’s the perfect size and style for our small home. Now to see if it’s the perfect soother of baby Ry- that will be the real test.

Stroller Wars

Since the stroller search has been the main focus for us lately, I figured I’d start there. Let me start with saying that the people at Babies 1st are some of the nicest and most patient folks you will ever meet. I  ould like to take a moment to make a shameless plug for their site for anyone searching for baby supplies. http://babies1st.com/

After hours, days, no weeks of searching online and reading reviews and thinking “we’ve found it!” then “oh wait, maybe not” my husband and I came to a conclusion… We had NO IDEA what stroller would work best for two kids, be durable, work for jogging, and fit in our Fiat. With how expensive a lot of these strollers were, we didn’t want to spend all that money just to buy something we have to return (and probably pay restocking fees, etc). Yet, on the other hand, the strollers we were looking at were not easy to locate in our local babies-r-us or target. The few local stores that had the strollers listed on their web sites, all told us that they were only available online and not in stores. We read tons of reviews on sites like Amazon, etc, but some of the data from other people seemed to conflict and no one really mentioned a car as small as ours, etc. So how could we make sure we made the right choice? Enter Babies 1st.

We found their showroom online and made the trek out to see them. We must have gone to their showroom about 6 or 7 times, wheeling different strollers out to our car to see how easily they would fold and if/how they would fit in our car. Taking JT (our two year old) in rides around the showroom floor to see how well they handled and how well he liked them. We narrowed our choices down to 3 strollers.

1) Baby Jogger City Select

2) Phil & Teds Explorer

3) Britax B-ready

These were all expensive (at least to us) so we wanted to make sure we would have something that would meet our criteria and last for the rest of our children’s stroller needing days. Our criteria were:

1) Small enough to fit in the back of Fiat 500

2) Easy to fold & pop the back wheels off

3) Comfortable ride for both kids

4) good seating options/arrangements

5) Easy to maneuver

6) Good over rougher terrain (I jog on a trail, but there are still bumps, tree roots breaking through, and patches of dirt path, etc.) This stroller needs to be good not just on the sidewalks, but on the paths too.

Our previous stroller was a Jeep Liberty and it was, as we lovingly called it, the SUV of strollers. It was actually pretty big for a single stroller, but it maneuvered well and took the paths I jogged with ease. After hours of looking, test driving JT around the store, and test folding and packing strollers into our car, we finally made our choice. Phil & Ted’s Explorer with Doubles kit.

The Baby city jogger fit well in our car and I loved its multiple seating options, but the seats were already too small for JT and it was a little bulky to pop the wheels off (getting them back on, though, was easy). The Britax again had seating arrangements I really liked, and seemed a bit roomier for the child in the bottom seat, but it was just a little too big for our trunk (and the tires weren’t air). 

For all three models we had to remove the back tires and second seat to fold and then store it allin the trunk. A little extra work, but I was expecting that when getting a double stroller into a small car.

I admit after first picking the Phil & Teds I was still a little skeptical. The seat had plenty of room for JT to grow. It fit great in our trunk with room to spare for the diaper bag and my laptop case for work, but I still wasn’t excited about the (what I thought) limited seating options. We picked out the one in Green and black (we had been testing their all black floor model, but when presented with color options, both loved the green.) So we slipped the boxes in to our Fiat and drove them home. It took my husband a few short minutes to unpack it and put it together and he quickly discovered that there were more seating options then I had realized. Turns out they actually have 3 different ways you can set the seats (Single, Toddler/Infant, Toddler/Toddler). My hubby showed me the very nice option designed for carrying a new born and Toddler in the stroller that I just love! Big bonus! It has a very nice weather screen to protect the baby when in the infant position. Plus something about the colors make the stroller seem to pop and JT just really loves riding in his “gween” stroller. (He wasn’t as thrilled with the floor model.) Finally, (at least in the infant/toddler setting) it folds perfectly with both seats attached and still fits like a glove (with room to spare) in our small trunk. Popping the back wheels on and off (a must to fit it properly in the trunk) is literally the click of a button.

I tested the he Phil & Ted’s out this morning and it was easy as pie! I get up at 4:30 and take JT out to the car to drop him off for daycare on my way in to work. Due to my pregnancy and some pre-existing back problems, I have had to make the poor dear wake up and walk out to the car this last month. This morning I was able to keep him asleep and just wheel him out in the stroller. It handled well down our building front steps and I was able to fold it quickly and get it in the trunk. It is actually a little smaller then our Jeep stroller! I can’t wait to test out maneuvering it through the mall when we go Christmas shopping (that was a nightmare with the big bulky Jeep last year.) So far I have only used it a few times (and only with one child, Ry isn’t here just yet) but I will keep you posted on my thoughts and experience as I use it more and with both kids!

*Side note, the only bad thing I have run into so far with this stroller is a complaint that I did see online a few times, the main sunshade pops off so easily! My husband swears that we just haven’t figured out how to put it on properly to keep it in place. I am thinking of zip-tying it to the stroller, lol. Even so, I am in love with this purchase. I will keep you posted!

Introduction

I got the idea to start this blog when I was trying to do some research of my own. My husband, our two year old, and I all live in a nice little two bedroom apartment. We drive a Smartfor2 and a Fiat 500. Even when we had our first son, we had to start making the most out of the “small” living space we call home. My husband works out of a Home Office, which we turned into an Office/Baby’s room.

When we found out number two was on the way, we knew had to start getting more creative on how we take advantage of the small spaces we were dealing with. It is a lot easier for people to say, “Just get a bigger house/Apt” then it is to do. A bigger place costs more, means moving, and quite frankly is unnecessary at this point. The place where we are “crazy” is that when we traded in our Prius (with over 215,000 miles on it) for the Fiat when we already knew we were pregnant with number two, lol.

Now no offense to you moms out there who love your Vans and your large house, that is great! If it is what you are comfortable with and you have the means to achieve, then more power to you. For me, I have several factors in my family and life that currently leave living (and driving) in smaller spaces making more sense to me.

1) I already live in my apartment. My husband and I are saving to buy a house (hopefully in the next five years) and it doesn’t make sense to me to spend the money, time, and effort right now to move just to (hopefully) move again in a few years.

2) I already have a small living space and a small car, and I barley have the time to keep them clean. I can’t imagine having to clean any more rooms or bathrooms, etc. At least not right now with my current schedule.

3) I don’t like vans, lol. It’s my preference, but I just personally don’t care for them.

4) I have found that actually keeping my spaces small helps to keep the amount of junk we collect down. We don’t have room to store spare/extra items, so if we don’t need it we don’t buy or pack-rat it- We find it a good home.

I understand that time and circumstances could change any of the above, but for now, that is what I have to work with.

In trying to find Baby item solutions for our small spaces, the problem we have run into the most was that with all our research online, we still had the hardest time finding good reviews and advice on said items. A quick example would be our stroller search. We were looking for a small, double stroller (an oxymoron I know). We preferred one that would allow me to jog with the kids, as this is one of my main forms of exercise. The reviews I found were often of people talking about how something was “small enough to fit in my van” or “small enough to fit comfortably in my suburban”. Well that’s great, but that does me no good in finding if it’s small enough to fit in my Fiat or my Smart, lol. I would find people complaining about the tight spaces of their “larger” vehicles, etc and think “this is getting me no-where”. So my husband and I really had to dig in and try some things out for ourselves. As we are discovering and learning more tips and tricks I started think, hmmm maybe someone else out there needs to know this stuff. Though the likely hood of tons of people finding this blog are low, I figured I would put it out there in case it might help someone else looking for ways to make the most out of their busy schedules and small spaces.