Show Us Your Life Baby Gear

This week Kelly's Korner is hosting "Show Us Your Life Fridays" and the topic is Baby Gear. I haven't participated the past few weeks because it has been all about food. Let's face it, that is not my forte!!! So, I figured I would make a Top Five List of Things I could not have lived without when I had Aidan and a list of Five Things I never used.

Top Five Items I Could Not Live Without:


1. Baby Swing. I would recommend buying one that A) Plugs in if the batteries run out and B) swings from side to side and front to back. Aidan slept in his swing in the corner of our room for the first 3 months of his life. This one is the Fisher Price Aquarium one. We got it as a hand me down and I have to admit, I was not that crazy about the "fish" print but it was a lifesaver!


2. Travel System. The Chicco travel system is pretty middle of the road on the price and I don't know how people can live without a stroller that allows you to just drop the car seat in it, and go. On this note, if you have two cars, buy an extra base, they are not fun to install over and over. I chose the orange and navy because (obviously) we had a boy. I don't think if we ever have a little girl that it will be a problem...especially if she is covered in pink.

3. Baby Carrier. I honestly used to see people wearing these and think " I would never use that thing"...well let me tell you, Aidan was in that thing all the time!! If I wanted to clean my house, he was in it. If we went grocery shopping, he was in it (car seat is too much to put in the shopping cart every time). We would host dinner parties, Adam would wear it. It was great! My best friend Candace is actually the one that bought it for me and she even wore it when we went out! I had the basic black because I am pretty simple but it comes in some cute colors these days!




4. The Avent breast pump to bottle conversion kit. If I had not bought this, I would have pumped in to the bottles that came with my Medela breast pump and I would have had to transfer every bottle. Avent has a conversion kit so that you can just screw on your bottles to the breast pump and pump directly in to them. I am sure every bottle manufacturer makes one.



5. Boudreaux's Butt Paste. One word. AMAZING. Aidan has thankfully never had really bad diaper rash but whenever he had a little, this stuff would clear it up in hours.

Then there is the one million things you can live without. I will only list my top five things so you don't have to read on forever and ever and ever.

1. Wipes Warmer. I returned mine to Babies R Us before I even opened it. Your baby is not going to know whether or not it's wiped are warm or not. If you want to warm your wipes, save yourself the money and run them under warm water. 2. Diaper Genie. It only holds about 7-10 diapers before you have to change it. Newborns go through this many diapers a day. A basic trash can will do just as well and you won't have to spend the extra money on the refills.


3. Swaddler blankets. Regular baby blankets work just as well. Aidan wasn't in to being swaddled for very long.



4. Bouncy seat. I know some people LOVE bouncy seats but quite honestly we did much better with the Bobby one versus the one that just vibrates. Feeding Aidan and then trying to put him in there was a disaster because it would make him sick.

5. The Bumbo Seat. Aidan NEVER used this. By the time he was big enough to sit in it, he was sitting up on his own and wanted to get out of it! There are people out there who love to take this with them everywhere but for us it just didn't work.