Baby stuff round 2: the first few months

In my 1st "baby stuff" post I talked mostly about the items we used in the first few weeks after bringing Lillie home. Here are a few other items that we found to be pretty important in the early months.

1 - Bouncer / swing - It's great to have some place that you can place baby and know he/she is safe/ can fall asleep/ can sit up and watch what is happening.

We had a bouncer and Lillie loved it. 

We borrowed a swing from friends and Lillie mostly hated it.  She liked it at first but after a few weeks she would scream bloody murder in it.  We have no idea why. I know numerous other little kids who loved it.  I guess it all depends on the child.  These are items that are definitely good gift items/ borrow items because you just don't know how baby will react to it.

2 - Play mat/ activity gym - A MUST have.  It was great having this as a place for Lil to get in her tummy time.  She would reach for the toys on her belly.  The toys were great for chewing and getting her gums ready for the early teeth. She wasn't a fan of tummy time at first and prefered to lay on her back and stare up at the toys above her.  This was used daily for a good 6-7 months or more before we retired it.

3 - Board books - Lillie has always been a big book fan.  She loved holding them and looking at them.  I was so glad to have books with sturdy pages that she wouldn't be able to destroy easily.  A lot of the board books out there now are small which is great for travel in the diaper bag (for entertainment when out in public at dinner, shopping, etc.).  I also found quite a few full sized board books which are great for small people to sit and flip and have the pages lay flat/ stay open.  It's harder to find the big books with good stories (not just a list of animals or numbers) but they are out there.

4 - Aquaphor - Seriously think I need to invest in this stuff.  We originally got it for diaper rash.  It gets used for everything under the sun now.  Diaper rash - check.  Dry patch on your elbow - check.  Baby acne - check. Raw skin from blowing nose - check. Cover a scratch - check. Cover a bug bite - check.

I've even taken to using it myself when I have a scar that needs to heal. Love, love, love it.

5 - Sheet saver - One of the many things that new parents don't look forward to doing is dealing with messes and changing sheets in the middle of the night when you can barely keep your eyes open.  With the sheet saver we only had to pull it out instead of taking out the mattress, stripping the bed, and remaking the bed.  Trust me, when you are awake at 3:00 am (when you were already awake at 1:00am, 1:37am, 2:03am, and 2:45am) you want that change to be as quick and easy as possible. We occaisionally just used a large burp cloth or recieving blanket (that we could tuck into the sides) under her but once she started rolling over those moved too easily and bunched up making us a little uncomfortable.  The sheet saver would stay put much better.

6 - Zooper - We recieved a Zooper from a group of friends at our shower.  They had used one as their travel stoller on a trip to Disney World and thought we needed our own.  They were right.  When we stopped using the infant carrier and frame we switched to our Zooper.  It folds easily and compactly, the seat folds all the way back (forms a bassinet), it has tons of storage (under the seat and in the back of the canopy, includes a cup holder, a detachable "foot muff" (kind of like a sleeping bag/ cover from the cold), a mosquito net, a rain cover, etc.  .... Our model is a bit older and the newer models also have a bar that can go across the front and a bar for the handle instead of 2 seperate handles (makes it so you can steer with 1 hand .. BONUS!)  The frame is fairly narrow so it fit easily wherever you need to go (whether storing it or pushing it).