Babies Gotta Have It

So if you read or watch this vlog, you know I’m into music for babies. I can’t say for sure that “The Mozart Effect” will turn your kid into Einstein, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to pop in a really good CD than it is to give your ten-month-old flash cards. And frankly, it’s much more enjoyable.

As I said in my first vlog post about music If Music Be The Food of Love…Rock On music for babies is supposed to be complex, involving many instruments and/or a clear melody and harmonies. It should also be rhythmic without being overwhelming (might want to save the AC/DC for her sweet sixteen), and well structured. The songs on That Baby CD and DVD are all that and more.

Thanks to Rob at OyBaby, my baby girl and I have been listening to and watching That Baby CD and DVD all morning, and I gotta say, I’m loving them. Here are eight reasons why:

1. The music is awesome. This is one cd that you won’t pop out of the car stereo even if you’re driving without your baby. The songs are kid-friendly covers of music by Fleetwood Mac, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Natalie Merchant, The Beatles, The Pretenders, and more. If you’re over 30, you probably know most of them. If you don’t, you should. I especially love “Happiness Runs”, “Pony Boy”, and “St. Judy’s Comet.” (Two of which, in all honesty, are new songs to me) Listen to samples here.
2. The music is kid-friendly, kid-themed, kid-appropriate but not about meatballs, funny hats, elephants, or fruit. These are grown-up songs for kids.
3. My baby loves the DVD. No joke. And she’s a bit of a DVD snob, actually. Not a big fan of lots of them. But she was rapt from the get-go and watched attentively for quite a while before returning to her toys. She’s ten months old. Granted she’s a genius so take that into consideration. But she really did enjoy it.
4. The videos themselves. Again, “Happiness Runs.” So beautiful. The whole DVD is a combination of animation and live action film, and the animation is really varied in style and content. The video for each song is designed to tell a simple story, really. “Sunday Sun” by Neil Diamond becomes a story of a day in the park with your family. “When We Grow Up” (Yup, the one from “Free to Be You and Me”) is about going to work with Mommy and Daddy. “Inch by Inch” by Peter, Paul and Mary is all about gardening. You can see samples of the videos here.
5. OyBaby, makers of That Baby CD and DVD, is a parent-run company.
6. That Baby CD and DVD are manufactured in the good old U.S. of A. using recyclable materials.
7. They have a “no questions asked” return policy and offer free replacement of discs that get scratched, fingerprinted, or smeared with peanut butter.
8. The CD actually looks like a little record. Way cool.

The DVD is designed for kids ages 0 - 5 and runs 35 minutes. The CD is great for all ages and runs 42 minutes. Put both together and you have a kickin’ and crazy-unique shower or baby gift.

Baby’s Bottom Line: That Baby CD and DVD totally rock. Need I say more?

Special Offer for Babies Gotta Have It Readers! Use promotional code “gottahaveit” when you buy That Baby CD or DVD and get 20% off your purchase. No kidding, 20%! Did I mention that Rob rocks too? He totally does. Thanks to Rob and everyone at Oybaby!

When did craft fairs become sexy? Certainly not back in 1982 when my mom and I were selling thumbprint drawings, dried flower arrangements, and plastic canvas Christmas ornaments from folding tables in steamy East Texas. All they were then, was hot. The craft fair is hot now, but in a whole new way.

Etsy.com is smokin’. The New York Times has called it “a crafty cross between Amazon and Ebay.” Martha’s a fan. I am too.

Etsy is a humungous online craft fair. Minus the lemonade, fresh rolls and funnel cake. Vendors set up shop, you the buyer peruse the shops online, and buy. Many of the artisans will do custom work for you. They take paypal. It’s so easy.

Etsy started in Brooklyn which I’m just generally on board with as a New Yorker. It has thousands of sellers, hundreds of thousands of members, and such a wonderful selection of amazing homemade products for Mamas and Babies that I could spend hours perusing it. And I have. Want a unique and wonderful item of clothing, baby quilt, toy, or piece of art for your nursery? Looking for a one-of-a-kind baby or shower gift? Don’t go to Toys R Us. Go to Brooklyn…metaphorically speaking. I’m just sayin’.

I gave Etsy a thorough perusal for my post: Kids Love Puppets, and I found an amazing selection of unique and whimsical puppets. The adorable felt finger puppets at Gowheele immediately caught my eye. These little fellas are full of personality and charm. And Gowheele’s Gwynne, designer and craftsperson extraordinaire, is exactly what Etsy is all about.

Gwynne is a Computer Animator by day (how cool is that), toymaker by night, and she brings her training in character design to her puppets. Just look into the faces of her little creations and you can see her unique vision smiling right back at you. In fact, Gwynne particularly loves creating custom finger puppets! How awesome would it be to have a personalized set designed after your family and pets for puppet shows in your house? Gwynne is currently expanding her inventory to include other soft toys and blankets which should be in her store soon, so stop by again in the weeks to come! Ultimately she’d love to have her own toy shop. I’d say she’s well on her way.

Baby’s Bottom Line: Had it with “Made in China”? Etsy.com is a wonderful source of unusual, handmade baby items.

And here’s your chance to win Gowheele’s “Circus Collection” of three adorable finger puppets: The Lion, The Monkey and The Elephant complete with the Circus Train Storage Pocket seen in the pictures above.

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY:

1. Just take a swing by Gowheele’s Etsy Shop
2. Come back, and leave me a comment naming your favorite finger puppet other than the ones featured in this giveaway. It’s that easy!

Want an extra chance to win? Blog about this giveaway, cite the link in your comment, and I’ll put your name in the hat twice! Make sure you include your email address with your entry.

Giveaway open to those with U.S. and Canada mailing addresses. Giveaway begins on Monday June 23rd and ends on Tuesday July 1st at midnight Eastern Standard Time. On Wednesday July 2nd my baby girl will draw the winning name and I will contact you by email immediately. Thanks for entering!

• I lovey the lovey. I can’t figure out where to get the sweet bear from Blankets & Beyond. It’s possible you’d have to go to Canada. Perhaps our Canadian friends can give us a source. I can however, point you in the right direction to find all the baby security blankets.
• The Douglas Cuddle Toy Giraffe
• I think you’ll have to go to England to find The Moulin Roty Loustics Lion Comforter.
• Baby Gund Comfy Cozy Lamb

• Congratulations to Jennifer Bowen (pink) and Amy H (blue)! A new pair of No Slip Charlies will soon arrive at your doorstep. (Read my Baby’s Bottom Line Review here) And such a huge thank you to everyone who visited the site, and forwarded the link to your friends, and entered. I actually have two more giveaways coming up in the near future so please do come back and enter again!
• Also a huge shout out to Morgan and Noreen for actually writing haikus! So noted and so appreciated!

• Also big thanks to everyone who listed my giveaway: Samsakara, Prizeatron, Blog Giveaways, A Contest Blog, Posh Mama, Laura Williams’ Musings, The Mom Blogs, and anyone else I missed leave me a comment and I’ll include you in the list! Thank you all so much!

Special offer to Babies Gotta Have It readers and viewers: NoSlipCharlie.com is offering 10% off your next order when you use the promo code BGHI10 at checkout! Thanks!

• The Ergo Baby Carrier. If you are looking for a really special baby gift for your wife, daughter or daughter-in-law, this one is a surefire hit. Show her you love her. Save her spine. Get her six weeks of yoga and one of these. She will love you for life.

Going out to eat is a really good thing. I mean really really good. Genius. Lots of options. No grocery shopping. No dishes to clean up. Plenty of time to watch Oprah.

We used to go out to eat a lot. We live in New York. Going out to eat is kind of a way of life here. Going out to eat and ordering takeout are the yin and yang of the New York City dining existence.

And then…the baby. Now we eat frozen waffles.

Restaurant high chairs are ok. They suffice. But they seem awfully crungy. And once your wee one becomes a toddler and refuses the stroller and refuses the high chair and refuses to sit on your lap and simply wants to plant her filthy Dora sneakers on your new going-out-to-eat pants that are only one size bigger than the pants you wore before you started this whole baby-making process (praise the Lord), or alternatively wants to run madly through the little romantic Italian hole-in-the-wall where you and your husband gazed deep into each others’ eyes over the warm potato, goat cheese and beet tartlet and dreamed of babies like crazy people, well then the whole high chair thing isn’t such a hot idea.

The Little Beetle Baby Chair (also available here), however, might bring a bit of the romance back to dining out. Romance has permanently left the building, you say? Well, at least it might allow you to eat food you didn’t make on dishes you won’t scrape and load into the dishwasher while your husband sits on the sofa, watches ESPN highlights, and drinks a beer.

So what’s so cool about this product? It’s a machine washable, fabric baby chair that slips over most grown-chairs and allows your kid to sit right there with you at the table! It’s light and compact and weighs nearly nothing. It comes from Australia which is just cool. It folds into a built-in pocket (doesn’t everything these days?) and is appropriate for kids 6 months and older who can sit up unassisted.

So once little Maddy, Jackson and Jaden are sitting at the grown up table with you? Well they might refuse the lentil stew and insist upon chicken fingers, but hey someone else will still be doing the dishes. And that’s something baby’s just gotta have.

Ok so trying to bathe a newborn is a bit like trying to bathe one of those hairless cats. Wrestling a squalling, mewling, slippery, squiggly little being into a shallow tub of water, adding soap into the mix, and trying to not only prevent the wee dear from aspirating water, but also hoping to remove some of the congealed spit-up and poop from under her chin…well, it ain’t easy.

What’s a pet owner…or a new mom…to do?

The folks at Mom Sense have a pretty clever idea! The No Slip Charlie! It’s a fingerless glove designed to help you get a grip just when you’re losing your grip on reality! The gloves are made of a poly/lycra fabric that gives you just enough friction to keep hold of that little tadpole. A super-soft terry cloth mitt goes over your fingers and velcros to the glove so you have the washcloth easily available. And just remove the mitt and let your fingers do the walking right through that sweet little head of hair when you need to shampoo. The mitt is machine washable and the gloves can be rinsed and drip-dry (each one even has a little elastic loop for easy hanging). Every package comes with two gloves and two terry mitts. No Slip Charlie’s come in baby girl pink and little boy blue.

The Mom Sense gal was kind enough to send me a pair…so I tried it…and I gotta say, it was pretty darned cool. My baby is out of the slippery eel phase, but I was still able to get a sense of how the gloves provide that extra bit of friction. And I was so jittery and nervous when I was giving those first baths that I really did feel like I was trying to wash a greased pig on a slip and slide. I think these would have helped me feel more secure. The attached mitt option is still useful even for a bigger baby–it’s more streamlined than a normal washcloth and fits snugly over your hands to really allow you to get into all those cracks and crevices!

Baby’s Bottom Line: The No Slip Charlie is a super cool product that will help new moms feel just a bit more confident wading into those early baths. Pair it with a soft baby towel, a rubber duck, and some baby wash for a really unique and practical baby or shower gift!

But wait….there’s more! The awesome folks at Mom Sense have sent along two No Slip Charlies for me to give away to you–one pink and one blue! How do you win? Easy! Just drop me a comment by midnight EST on Tuesday June 17th saying which color you’d like! That’s it. Oh if you want to throw in a haiku or a quote from your favorite John Mayer tune that’s great too. But all you gotta do to win is comment below. I’ll draw two names on Wednesday June 18th and contact you via email if you’ve won! Thanks so much to Kim from Mom Sense (and to her son Charlie who inspired the product) for this awesome giveaway! Giveaway open to those with a U.S. mailing address only.

• Special offer to Babies Gotta Have It readers and viewers: NoSlipCharlie.com is offering 10% off your next order when you use the promo code BGHI10 at checkout! Thanks!

• Bumbo Baby Seat and Play Tray. On every baby registry. For a reason. Hey, after spending three months lying on your back like a lump you’d probably want to sit up too.
• Also big shout out to A Cowboy’s Wife and Skimbaco for the to-die-for ladybug kicks the bean is wearing.  They were featured on Oprah. We love them! Aren’t giveaways awesome…Check back here soon for my first giveaway!

Ok so having a baby is friggin’ expensive, right? I mean even if you do try to pare down what you buy to the absolute essentials…and you get bags of clothes as hand-me-downs (which is a wonderful thing–see previous post)… you’re still gonna shell out a decent amount of cash for that new little bundle of joy. And then, very shortly, it dawns on you. He will grow out of this stuff in, like, thirty seconds. Literally. And then he will need new things. That little froggie romper that swam on him yesterday is now clinging to his sumo wrestler thighs like white on rice. That little froggie romper is still in great shape, but you don’t have the time or energy to lug the folding table out on the lawn for a garage sale (plus the classified ad alone costs upwards of thirty bucks in many towns), and you sure as heck don’t feel like tanking up the car and strapping in the kids to drive to the thrift shop. Oh where oh where are those de-clutter elves who will arrive at your home and haul away all the things you no longer need? And how oh how will you get all that new stuff without dipping into the 529 fund?

Enter freepeats! It’s like Craig’s List but without the creepy personal ads. And you won’t spend hours wading through sale listings to find the stuff people are dying to give away. Freepeats features all maternity, kid and baby items–all free.

Sound too good to be true? That’s what I thought, so I tried it. Registration is $4.95 (unless you register in a brand new forum in which case it’s free). I paid with paypal and I was off to the NYC forum. The listings weren’t extensive, given the size of the NY Metropolitan area. But sure enough, in my neighborhood, I found a gal giving away 80 pampers because her baby has sensitive skin and she had to change brands. I emailed her, set up a meeting, walked to her gorgeous apartment (cue massive amounts of drool), and left with forty bucks worth of brand new diapers (recouping my five buck membership fee). And a possible play date to boot!

So what’s the catch? There is none really. But this is a site in development and it behooves you to get in early. If you join during the first month of your forum’s existence your membership is free. Plus they are offering several promotions to win you over as a freepeats groupie. If you’re in Denver or Orlando, join by 6/16/08 for free lifetime membership! Then, the first 100 offers listings in any new forum will be entered into a drawing to win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Don’t like those odds? Email them a photo of your kid enjoying her new freepeats item–the first five photos submitted will be entered into a drawing to win a $20 Amazon.com or Target gift card.

Freepeats is currently up and running in Denver, Orlando, Cleveland, Nashville, Seattle, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York City, Atlanta, DC, Philly, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Detroit. They plan to establish forums in two dozen other cities in 2008 so click here to find out when they’ll be opening in your area–or to let them know you’d like to join the Freepeats party.

Baby’s Bottom Line: freepeats rocks. Join now! The more members, the more free stuff that will be available, the more playdates to be had, and the more room you have to set up that elliptical trainer in the basement. Am I right?