#1) Lamaze Mortimer the Moose
Actually..all of our Lamaze products have been tried, loved, and nibbled on. This guy stays hooked on the stroller, we also have Jacque the Peacock for the car and Freddie the Firefly for the house. She loves to chew/suck on Mortimer's hooves, his ears, and she squeals over the different textures and sounds that each part of him makes.
#2) Dora The Explorer - Say/Find it two ways!
My mom and I picked this thing up at a consignment store for maybe $3.50. It's freaking awesome. It has Dora, Backpack, and a bunch of different things to hit like pears, apples, drums, balloons, etc. There's 3 different modes. 1- Dora will say each item in both English and Spanish. 2- Dora will ask you to find something and give you the name of it in Spanish. 3- Backpack will ask you to find something and give you clues to help figure out which one. Sophie is on stage 1 right now (obviously) but every so often we'll switch it to one of the other stages because they sing the Backpack song and the 'We did it' song and Sophie loves those tunes like no other.
#3) VTech Crazy Legs
Another one of those 'Sophie is a bit young but we'll get it anyway' buys. We found this one at a consignment store as well. It's got 6 shapes on the outside and each shape you can press and it makes noise/says the shape/plays a tune. Each shape also has a little cord attached to it with a corresponding hollow shape, you match up the shapes with the right slots and they still do the same noise/shape/tune. Pop the bug on the top and all the shapes pop off. Sophie's eyes light up when she does the actual popping. I usually put the shapes in for her, since she's more into the singing right now...but she'll drag this thing around and listen to it all day long. It has several stages, much like VTech toys do..learning, singing, shapes, songs..etc.
#4) VTech Discovery Nursery Farm
We have the older version of the one listed on Amazon, so ours looks a little different...but still the same general idea. We found ours at a yard sale, so the orange 2 doesn't work...but everything else is awesome. It has a learning stage and a sing-a-long stage centered around farm animals and songs like "Mary had a little lamb", "Bingo", "You are my sunshine", and of course E-I-E-I-O. This thing fits perfectly nestled into her high chair tray...which helped us many many times over when we sat her down and then had to warm up food and she got fussy.
#5) Baby Einstein Musical Motion Activity Jumper
Luis was skeptical about this thing...I wanted one right away. We waited until she was about 5-6 months old and whoa! She was a jumping fool! It has classical music at the touch of a button, places for links so you can hook your own toys, a couple of teethers, and an option to learn in spanish, english, and french. Now that Sophie is crawling, she's less interested in it...but still will crawl right over to it and attempt to play with the toys from the side. When that happens, I plop her right in and she jumps to her heart's content.
Now let's move on to the everyday stuff that i'm grateful for...mostly things that help me out day to day and that can include food!
Plum Organics: Super Puffs
Sophie eats all flavors of these and I find myself preferring them over the Gerber puffs. These are more crunchy and lighter flavored, they also have unique flavors like Spinach & Apples, Sweet Potatoes & Peaches, and Blueberry & Purple Sweet Potato. They are an awesome addition to a small container of cheerios so Sophie doesn't just eat plain cheerios all day while we're out. It's a great way to throw a little variety out there too with the different colors of each puff.
Plum Organics Cereal
I'm grateful for this twofold. One reason is because Sophie will not eat any type of rice cereal and right when we had found a multi grain cereal she gobbled up, the company stopped making that particular kind. This leads to the second reason I love this stuff. We found it at Big Lots one day, for about $1.50 a bag. It looked interesting, said multi-grain, so we picked up a bag to try it. Sophie loves this stuff. She'll eat it plain, mixed with fruit, with cinnamon. The flakes are fluffy, which makes mixing it super easy to do. We grabbed 5 more bags and came away with a good supply for very little cost.
Links!
I am a certified Link-o-holic. I have about 4 sets of these and i use them everywhere. To clip teething toys to the high chair to keep things from hitting the floor. To clip things to the diaper bag handles.I use them in the stores to clip things to the cart handle. I even have a set clipped to my changing table to keep a loose drawer from opening on it's own. She chews on them, and I don't have to wash her toys a million times when they hit the floor. Win.
Dishwasher Basket
I can't take credit for this one. My sister-in-law introduced me to these and I turned around and bought 2. I keep them permanently in the top rack of my dishwasher and I seriously don't know what I would have done without them.
Gentle Giraffe
This didn't go under toys, because she doesn't play with him. GG lovingly lives in her crib and she listens to him every night. Luis was skeptical about this one too, but I had a wonderful set of recommendations from my mamas (my January mamas, that is) and decided to bite the bullet and go for it. Wonderful thing that I did. Even Luis wonders now why we didn't get it sooner, it is such an integral part of our bedtime routine. What's awesome about this thing is that I purchased it about 5 months ago and since then, it has been on every night for 45 minutes straight (sometimes it gets a second round) and it has yet to die on me.
Giraffe
Take & Toss bowls w/ lids
These are a life saver now that Sophie is eating more finger foods. I have 2 packs of them and I use them constantly. There's several that go over to the sitter's house filled with applesauce, yogurt, or cheerios & puffs. There's one full of cheerios & puffs that stays in the diaper bag, I use them to feed her out of if all her bowls are dirty. They come with lids and even though the name applies that you can 'toss' them, they are 100% reusable. I think the idea is that they are inexpensive enough that you can accidently leave them somewhere and not worry about wasting a lot of money.
Munchkin mesh feeder
I cannot say enough good things about this! We bought it originally to use with fresh fruit to give Sophie a chance to taste some of the chunkier fruits without choking on the bigger pieces. It worked great until she decided she hated cantelope, watermelon, and blueberries. We retired it for a bit, and then she started teething. Now my baby girl has 8 teeth and is working on #9....and they came in pairs and pretty much one right after another. We would stay up late nights with her wailing and pushing away cold rags, cold teethers, anything really that was suggested. Finally having enough of seeing her in pain, I pulled out the mesh feeder and stuck a whole ice cube into it. Silence! She would suck a couple of ice cubes down through that thing and would get the cool relief on her gums plus the added bonus of water intake (she refused bottles while teething...so we were worried about dehydration) Now she is eating more chunky stuff and with 8 teeth the ice thing doesn't work anymore, but I am forever grateful for having it during those couple of months that she needed it.
I think that's it. Everything else I'm happy to have, of course...but these are just some of the things that looking back...i realized that I pretty much would not have made it to the next day (sane, at least) without. What are some of the things YOU can't live without?
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