Ain't No Mom Jeans

DIY: An Easy but Cool Outdoor Space for Toddlers (And Portable Enough for Apartment Dwellers)

M and I were recently interviewed by the Denver Post about how to keep the little ones entertained (but safe) at home.  You can read the full article here.  My contribution to the article centered on the transformation my balcony goes through each summer.

As many of you know, I live in the heart of Denver.  We live in a 2nd story condo, right off of a busy street, on an intersection that is the site of fairly serious accidents at least twice a year.  We have bums, I'm practically on a first-name basis with the 911 guys, and we live right across the street from an apartment building only known as "the crack house".  On the upside, you can find a liquor store merely by walking a couple of blocks in any direction, and porn 24 hours a day.  Sadly, most of the hookers have left.  

It's not what most people think of as an ideal environment for raising kids, but for us, it's home.  And one of the ways we've found to cope is by making the best of what outdoor space we do have: our balcony.

The trick to transform a balcony into a play space is that everything must be portable and easily washed.  One can't just hose everything off when it gets dirty.  And because the balcony sits right off the living room, I can't stand to get one of those plastic Fisher-Price sand and water tables -- I would end up poking my own eyes out, staring at that thing all day.  Not to mention that it's hard to store off-season.

So I've spent the last two years trying to find items that look cool, and are also portable, washable and store-able.  Lastly, I want to be able to quickly transform the space from a day-use play space, to a night-use dinner space.  Here's what I've found:

Found! Toddler Proof Cell Phone Cases (for iPhones, Blackberries and Others)

Raines and I visited my parents in Gulf Shores last month. The first day we spent on the beach, I made sure my cell phone was safely zippered into an inside pocket of my bag.  Upon unpacking that night, I opened up the zippered pocket to find that *someone* had carefully unzipped the pocket, filled it with sand, and then zipped it back up.

I can't imagine who.

Immediately after, the main button on my iPhone became very hard to push.  You could practically hear the grains of sand scraping against the underside of the button.  So upon our return, I took my iPhone to the Mac store.  I simply wanted them to open it up, blow out the sand, then return it in one piece. HA!

Step Into My Office: Toddler Parsons Desk

 I have this problem time and again.  Maybe you have it too.  I want to provide a fun, child-friendly atmosphere for my kids, but I loathe, loathe, loaaathe most children's furniture, design motifs and color schemes.  For the most part, they're just so bizarrely saccharine that they seem intentionally designed to assault adult sensibilities.  And, in my experience, despite lending that coveted daycare-exploded-in-my-living-room effect, they're under-appreciated by their target audience anyway.  

10% Strider PREbike Coupon Code Benefits WeeCycle

WeeCycle.  Weduce.  Weuse.  No, this post isn’t about the new trend in green baby babble.  I’m talking about WeeCycle, our hands-down fav chartiy, founded by two of Ain’t No Mom Jeans’ bffs  (they freaked when they found out Colorado has one of the fastest-growing rates of childhood poverty in the nation).  WeeCycle’s mission is to distribute new and gently used baby gear--bouncers, swings, car seats, cribs, highchairs, the things that really add up--to families in need, and now when you use the WeeCycle Strider PREbike coupon code, Strider Sports will donate 10% of your purchase price back to WeeCycle and give you free ground shipping to boot.

Baby Gifts: Nambe Baby Rattle/Teether

For some kids, teething is no biggie.  “I never noticed my babies getting teeth,” many a mama has told me, as I melted her with my laser-like glare.  For others, teething is a personality-altering event of head-spinning, Exorcist-esque proportions.  That would be my children.

That’s when you need to call in the big guns.  Tylenol.  Ibuprophin.  Hyland’s Teething tablets--if you do that kind of thing, that is--and you’d better believe I do. . .  But when you’re in between alternating doses and the apple of your eye still resembles The Scream,  you need a serious teether and I do declare I’ve discovered the holy grail.

  

Rainy/Sick Day Activities: Water Cups

The easiest thing to do with a sick, fussy toddler, of course, is to pop him on the couch and let him veg out in front of the TV.  That's what I feel like doing when I've been barfing my brains out.  But when my two-year-old, who never saw an operational television until he was over a year old, started talking about the Wonder Pets like they were friends of his a couple of weeks ago, I realized it was [way past] time to put the breaks on the boob tube consumption.

This winter has been brutal.  With two kiddos, our sick days have doubled and it seems like one virus just snowballs into another.  In the past six weeks, we've had a crazy stomach flu, a cough & cold and now another cough & cold and each bug takes 7-10 days to work its way through the entire family. We're perennially tired, head-achey, generally achey and snotty.  So. . . our normally active lifestyle of play dates, playground outings, walks, music class, museums and running errands, has ground to a halt and we're all going bonkers with cabin fever.  

What to do with a tiny, sick little guy who can't go anywhere or do anything we usually do?  Well, in our case, water always does the trick, but we can't spend half of every day in the bath and the wood floors in my kitchen are going to warp from the time we spend at the sink filled up with water, boats and cups with Huck on his stepladder.            

Maybe you already do some version of this, but here's a stupidly easy, cheap and fun activity that keeps my little man happily engaged for 20 minutes or more.  It's great fine motor practice and is about a thousand times more water-wise than filling a bath or sink. We call it Water Cups.

Here's what you need:

- A cookie/jellyroll pan 
- Two shatterproof cups, different sizes, one filled with warm water
- A silicone potholder (optional, prevents slipping)

If your kid is anywhere near as obsessed with water and pouring as mine is, she'll love this activity, and so will you.  Strap him in his booster or high chair at the table while you check email or empty the dishwasher and let her have at it.  I put a silicone potholder on the table to prevent the cookie sheet, which keeps at least some of the water from slopping all over the table, from slipping and fill one of the cups with warm water.  Occasionally I pour the water from the cookie sheet back into one of the cups. 

  

Do you have some fun, cheap and easy activities to keep your tykes from going bonkers on sick or rainy days?  Email us your ideas and pics and we may feature them on our blog.

Happy cold & flu season, Mamas!  Spring is just around the corner.

- M

Review: Action-Packed Eco-Friendly Sprig Toys

My attempt at green parenting has been a precipitously slippery slope.  I started out with cloth diapers, a natural rubber mattress, all organic clothing, homemade organic baby food and exclusively non-plastic toys.  But what I've ended up with is 7th Generation disposables/part-time (like, when the mood strikes me) cloth diapering, a mix of pricey organic cotton and $2.97 Target specials (made, probably, by kids only slightly older than mine), frozen "all natural" chicken tenders & Whole Market taquitos, and more plastic toys than I can shake a stick at.  So much for my lofty green ideals. 

What happened between then and now?!  Well, lots of things, like gag-inducing encounters with the diaper sprayer, the sheer economics of dressing a rapidly growing kid in $30 shirts, picky eating, and, of course, my kiddo's preferences in toys.

We recently had a green toy coups, however, when I discovered Sprig Toys, a Colorado-based eco-friendly toy line.  For Huck's big 0-2, I purchased the Dolphin Explorer Boat (because anything to do with water is an instant win with the boy wonder) for $29.99, the dump truck and the loader, both $14.99 at Real Baby in Denver.  All three toys are paint-free and made of Sprig's proprietary SprigWood, a delightfully satisfying-to-the-touch bio-composite material made of reclaimed wood and recycled plastic.  If your little one isn't a classic dump truck/loader enthusiast, check out DuneBug's Sand Truck, which includes an adorable DuneBug character and wild flower seeds.  
 

The little man especially adores the Dolphin Explorer set, spending nearly an hour at a go on his step ladder at the sink and in the tub with his boat, captain and dolphins, and we're looking forward to spending warmer spring days at the playground digging and dumping sand.  For my part--and considering kids are spending record-breaking time in passive play with battery operated toys and electronic media--I adore how active he is in his play with these items--Sprig Toys are, as a rule, "kid-[not battery-]powered," which is just what this pseudo-green mama wanted.

Next Sprig Toys acquisition: The Discover Rig.  Lights, motor sounds and songs are powered not by batteries, but by a generator triggered when your kid moves it.  Also of interest, Sprig's Storybuilders: four classic story books with block-and-panel sets that allow kids to build and re-enact classic storylines.  If I had a little gal, I might even do Princess Penny's Story Building Palace.  I wish it weren't so. . . pink. . . but it would be a blast to build a little castle (as long as she can build skyscrapers out of normal blocks, too!) and hey, who doesn't like a pointy princess hat on a cute little faceless figurine?

Going as green as I can,
- M        

 

A Chair of One’s Own: Monte Designs Cubino Kids’ Chair

Can you imagine having a job where you don’t even get a chair to sit in?  Where you’re required to sit on the floor, demonstrating your brilliance by building complex structures out of wooden blocks and operating small machinery without even a cushion or back support?  And when you do get to sit on the peculiarly oversized furniture, you have to hoist yourself up, throw one leg up to your ear and claw and scratch your way into the seat.  Then, as you sit there, finally resting your back, you realize that you can’t even bend your flippin’ knees.  Such is the plight of your average 2-6-year-old.  No wonder they’re cranky by 5 o’clock. 

Enter kids’ furniture, which I never, not in a million years, thought I would purchase until I noticed my dear boy throwing himself into every tiny chair he encountered, whether at friends’ homes or in stores.  What I found during my research was that kids’ easy chairs have a way of being either a.) insanely hideous and unworthy of even your lowliest design sensibility, or b.) particularly expensive.  

Until recently, the best affordable contemporary/transitional seating option for kids was the Pottery Barn kids’ chair, which has rolled arms, a number of festive fabric and personalization options and retails for about $120.00.  But what I wanted, and what Monte Designs delivered on, was a kids chair that would provide a comfy place for the boy wonder to snack and flip through books but that would essentially blend in with my living room décor so I didn’t have to hide it whenever we had guests.   

The Monte Designs Cubino Kids Chair, which retails for $109.00, is neither a.) nor b.).  It is covered in a very well-tailored, clean-lined and removable slipcover that’s made of washable, stain- and water-resistant micro suede in eight modern color options.  I chose (courtesy of Grandma & Beba--thank you!) the brown and orange to compliment my chocolate brown micro suede sectional.  Huck luv luv luvs this chair, as evinced by his obvious relief when he first sat in it (pictured above), and so do I. 

- M

Activity Gym Review: Kushies Baby Shangrila vs. Infanitino Vintage Twist and Fold

With our firstborn, we hemorrhaged money as we sought out the “best” and most complicated baby accoutrement available.  Being inexperienced with kids in general, I was totally unaware that, given a choice between a piece of Tupperware and a lights and bells-make-your-baby-brilliant-machine, most babes would happily have the Tupperware any day of the week. 

I’d like to think experience has made me wiser with baby number two, but apparently that’s not entirely true.  Case and point: since discovering that my Gymini mat, used for Boy Wonder No. 1 was lost in our move, I’ve had my eye on the Kushies Baby Shangrila play mat ($125.99).  It’s been described as the Rolls Royce of baby play gyms.  I loved the look of the mat itself and the fact that it’s reversible from one colorful side to a black and white graphic.  Alas, the Shangrila mat was not in production for much of 2009 as the company worked out some design kinks, so I couldn’t get my hands on one (making me want it more, Shangri-La indeed!).  As a stop-gap, I purchased the Infantino Vintage Twist and Fold activity gym ($36.99) and ended up loving it. 

The Infantino is a straight forward play gym, but it doesn’t skimp on the extras.  It comes with a tummy time bolster, cute toys, fun, vintage colors and an absolutely brilliant folding mechanism that allows you to just twist and close the gym like an umbrella, making it infinitely easier to store than other gyms and great for people who really like to put all the toys away at the end of the day.  All this at the rock bottom price of $36.99!  Why would I bother purchasing anything else when all our play gym needs were already being met?  Parental guilt, that’s why.

As a second child myself, I’m hyper sensitive to short-shifting the tiniest man in my house in any way. So, struggling for a Christmas gift for my then 3 month old (who has everything since he’s a second), I received an email update alerting me that the Shangrila was now in stock and ready for purchase.  Perfect!  What delightful and beyond-perfection, already-sleeping-through-the-night infant couldn’t use the Rolls Royce of play gyms?

Well, it’s here.  And I feel dumb dumb dumb for wasting over $100 on a cute play mat that doesn’t even serve its purpose as well as the bargain basement Infantino version already had.  The double-sided mat is really nice, but the arches are too high, and the three (yes, only THREE!) hanging toys are incredibly boring and don't even dangle low enough to be batted at, which is the whole point of a play gym. The toys that attach to the mat are intriguing, but more suited to a 6-9 month old, by which time I’ll have introduced a whole bunch of other toys.  Furthermore, the toy rings are over-engineered and hang on velcro, which makes them adjustable, but due to the high pitch of the gym arches, they don't hang within a baby’s arm’s reach (unless you have a really giant baby with super long arms or you place your baby all the way to one corner of the gym ), and it only comes with two Velcro straps, yet another disappointment for the price tag.  

Guess we’ll have to go for babe number three to make all this mess more cost-effective : )!  I hear my dear hubby in the background: GULP.

M.

 

 

 

Toddler Gift Guide – Christmas & Holiday 2009

What to get the toddler who has everything?  Ideally something that inspires her budding sense of independence, captures the imagination, and challenges him to learn new skills, all while having fun. Here are our top-five picks for the season:

1.) Run/Balance Bike ($69.99 +)
What toddler wouldn’t squeal with delight at the sight of a shiny new bike under the tree?  I take intentional detours through Target specifically to avoid the bicycle section, but when we do stop to look at the shiny yumminess, it’s obvious that bicycle riding is a long way off for my little guy as even the tiniest bikes tower over (and threaten to topple on) him.  Not so with a run bike, the hottest new development in kids’ cycling.  Unlike tricycles and training wheels, run bikes teach the most critical component of bicycle riding first: balance, only without those pesky pedals that are always gumming things up.  Check out runbikes.com for both wooden and metal balance bikes, including LikeaBike ($192.00+), KaZAM ($99.00), Strider ($95.00) and Kettler ($110.00).

 

2.) Dress Up Box ($9.99 +)
Watching as the apple of your eye develops a sense of humor, self and imagination is an experience like no other, so foster your kiddo’s penchant for imaginary play with a dress up box.  There are a number of pre-fab dress up kit options out there that run around $100.00 - $150.00, but most tend towards professions or princesses, and, I feel, are too rigid and generic to be fun.  Check out this post on Martha Stewart for ideas on how to stock your dress up box with items you most likely have around your house or can pick up at Goodwill, throw in some fun career hats available from Amazon ($32.99) and a bunch of Waldorf-inspired play silks, fairy wings and soft swords ($9.99+) from Three Sisters Toys and you’re all set.

 

3.) The Learning Tower ($190.00)
I love love love the Learning Tower ($190.00) for kitchen and creative play.  This is truly one of the best tools for helping your child become independent and do it, whatever that is, for himself.  Not only can your little guy or gal safely help out whilst you whip up and burn a batch of cookies, s/he can also use The Learning Tower as an easel with the attachable, reversible dry erase/chalk board ($69.99), as a playhouse with the company’s playhouse kit ($34.99), or, again go Waldorf and throw a night sky silk scape or similar ($34.95) in the mix to make it even more fun.

4.) Sticky Fingers Kids Cooking Kits ($27.00 - $52.00)
Kiddos love to do things themselves, and nowhere is that more true than in the kitchen.  Case-in-point:  my picky eater will gobble virtually anything he’s had a hand in making and while it’s a tad freaky to watch him teeter atop our kitchen step ladder, the cold sweat is worth it when he chirps “Aye didit!” and then noshes happily on whatever we’ve made.  With the focus on getting kids to eat more wholesome foods in school and out, the more our babes are in the kitchen the better.  But how to scramble, stir and slice with the giant-like utensils found in the common household kitchen?   Enter Sticky Fingers kids cooking sets.  These high-quality utensils actually work, unlike play sets, so your honey bunch can get elbow-deep in the flour without frustration.

5.)  Hohner 1/2 Size Classical Guitar ($49.00)
I don't know a single child who isn’t fascinated by musical instruments of all shapes and sizes.  I’m not a musician and don’t have a strong interest in trying to make my boy a prodigy, but his all-out obsession ("Taaaar.  Tar tar tar.") with our otherwise un-played full size guitar made me think—why are we always pushing drums and not other instruments on babes when they can play them just as easily?  Save your sanity.  Skip the drum kit and get your dumpling an actual, tune-able guitar he can hold and strum, but save yourself some trouble: resist the temptation to go with the cheapest option.  Every kids’ guitar I’ve seen in stores like Target and Toy R Us is junk.  Junk junk junk (you can see where my boy wonder gets his emphatics from, no?).  If they’re 1/2 size, which is appropriate for small kids, they’re toy guitars that can’t even be tuned, or if they’re somewhat decent, they’re 3/4 size, which is more appropriate for the 6-and-up-set.  Whether or not your musical monkey ever takes a single lesson, this guitar will prove to be a toy with staying power because it's not actually a toy, so check out the Hohner 1/2 size classical guitar at Active Musician, which has nylon strings that are easy for little hands to strum, but skip the pick if you have wee ones under three about the house.

Happy holiday shopping, Mamas!

- M