Friday, May 21, 2010

Best Seat in the House

As I mentioned in the latest monthly Little G update, he's using a new high chair these days.

We had been using a Chicco Hippo Hook on Chair that was working pretty well for us, but there were some challenges that we needed to address that a 'real' high chair would fix nicely.



Namely, the chair is made of fabric, which meant we spent a lot of time taking the whole thing apart and tossing it in the washer. Because no matter how laid back you are, there are only so many days you can go with food-encrusted fabric surrounding your baby.

Another issue we had was that we only had one place for the hippo chair to go, the dining room table. Which on one hand, was great, because that meant Little G could actually sit AT the table WITH us when we had dinner every night...but it quickly became a hassel to not be able to put him elsewhere...like in the kitchen...since every time he eats he makes a HUGE mess and then I have to climb under the table to clean it up. Every. Time. He would still make a mess on the floor if he wasn't in the Hippo chair, but at least I wouldn't have to crawl under the table six times a day to clean it up. Once is enough for me.

Continuing in the subject of mess...those handy dandy hook on hippo's? Yeah, they get food all encrusted in and around and underneath them as well...which means taking the darn thing off to clean it every time so you can at least get the worst of the crusty stuff off.

So, if you're paying attention, here are the things we needed a new high chair to address:

  • No fabric; easy to wipe down
  • Able to use at the table, but also away from the table with a tray
  • Needed to be big enough to accomodate our behemoth child who already is the size of a small two year old

You would think that would be easy to find, but turns out, there were only two options that fit the bill for us.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, we found something that met all of our needs but it just happened to be the chair that I so desperately wanted to avoid because of its trendiness and subsequent cost. I hemmed and hawed over it for a while. I even scoped out imitation versions of this chair and read awful reviews on them. So eventually, we sucuumbed to the inevitable and purchased a Tripp Trapp Highchair from Stokke with an add on, after market, Play Tray.



In a word, it's awesome. He can sit at the table with us when we eat together at dinner, and during the day he can eat in the kitchen while I get stuff done. It is easy to clean up and he won't out grow it (which was the biggest issue with most of the high chair options out there...he's already too big for them!)

Of course, I just went on and on about his being able to eat at the table with us for dinner and the pictures below show him with the tray while we eat outside, but mostly that was because the outside table is too dirty for him to be eating off of. But isn't it nice we had an option?!



So what baby items have you resisted purchasing that you ended up with anyway?

7 comments:

  1. Ok, so we have the stokke as well but are slightly hesitant to buying the play tray because it's so darn expensive! Where did you get it from and did you guys shell out the big bucks for it?? We still have Iz in the bumbo with the tray but soon enough she'll be too big.

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  2. I've told you this via Twitter already, but I love the design of that high chair!

    A question from someone currently working on her baby registry: would you say a high chair is REQUIRED, or can a booster seat suffice? Since we live in a small condo, we're limited on space so I was thinking that going with just a booster seat would be better for us...

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  3. The seat looks so beautiful! I love it! He is so cute in there.

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  4. Bethany - We got the tray from Magic Beans in Brookline. One of the main reasons I wanted a chair that wasn't required to be at the table only was so that I could feed him in the kitchen when it wasn't meal time for anyone else in the house. So, having the tray was important. It was expensive, but a necessary evil in my mind. Several of the reviews of the generic high chair that we looked at that comes WITH a tray discussed how their tray was so easy for the baby to just flip off the chair. I was pleased to see, and since purchasing it have been pleased to experience, that the add on tray for the Stokke is sturdy, big and (currently) impossible for Little G to remove.

    Geek in Heels - I don't think a high chair is required at all. In fact, I highly suggest waiting on getting a high chair until your child needs one. A booster seat would probably have worked great for us, except Little G is the size of a small two year old and he wouldn't fit in a lot of them. That's something we wouldn't have known prior to his needing a chair.

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  5. I was super curious about those clip-on chairs but definitely wondered about the fabric getting nasty. A lot of the typical highchairs have cushy fabric seats - which not only seems inconvenient, but pretty unnecessary. I am really excited for our Tripp Trapp to come. Amazing the things I get a thrill out of these days. ;)

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  6. :) <3 !

    mamigogo.blogspot.fi

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