Product review: Trike

Kelly: Ask and you shall receive.

I took Adriana into Target a couple of days ago and she refused to ride in the carrier, stroller, or cart, so I let her walk. It actually went surprisingly well, with only two annoying incidents: first she really wanted the barrettes with the long ribbons and sparkly beads, for which her hair is much too fine, and then when she spotted her beloved trike. There was a bit of a meltdown because ADRIANA'S BIKE. That right there? Up on the shelf on display? ADRIANA'S BIKE. And her mean old mother wasn't letting her ride it. 

When I was shopping for a bike last spring, I eyed tricycles in some of the stores, wondering when Adriana would be big enough, looking forward to picking out Adriana's first trike. Maybe the shiny red one? Or the turquoise one with the streamers? What about orange with hot pink flowers? I didn't think she was big enough yet, but her grandma bought her a pink and purple Radio Flyer trike this fall, and Adriana is quite pleased. When I told her we were going on an airplane to Grandma's house last week, she signed "bike." When we were there, she would wake up in the morning and ask for it right away. She spent rainy days ride and pushing it around indoors, and was always eager to take it outside for a spin. She's about 34 inches tall, and her feet already reach the pedals comfortably. She can't pedal very well yet, but she Flintstones the thing around happily, and is positively gleeful if you'll push it so that her feet go around on the pedals. But there you have my only real objection to this trike, something that I didn't realize that I needed in a trike: a steering handle for me. After half an hour of pushing her up and down the block on Thanksgiving, my back was tired. We'll probably get her a trike for our house before too long. But I'm thinking it might have a push bar for me that doesn't require so much hunching over.

Product review: Lands' End 5-ounce No-iron Flannel Sheets

Dude, you know this NaBloPoMo thing has gone on too long when I start writing about bedding. Two days left!

Sheets seem like a funny thing to recommend, but I am totally in love with these sheets from Lands' End. I bought a set for our bed last winter, and loved them so much that I actually put off moving Adriana's bed into her own room until I had a set of these sheets to put on it. Until they arrived, the only twin sheets I had were bamboo, and those just weren't warm enough. (Not that she sleeps under the covers, but I knew that I would end up in there with her a lot, and I figured needed to be comfortable.) These flannel sheets seem to really hold onto body heat and I am cozy when I am between them. They are more expensive than the flannel sheets I've bought in the past, but they are also much more comfortable and have held up well through plenty of washes, whereas my cheap ones always got thin quickly and ended up with holes. The Lands' End ones are thick, and so soft they are almost velvety. They shed an incredible amount of lint in the dryer--Adriana's are bright red and I swear it looks like I killed Elmo when I clean out the lint trap afterwards--but after a year of washing mine don't seem to be getting any thinner.

Product review: Lil Rinser

The first time I spotted the Lil Rinser at Tiny Tots I was curious about it, but decided it couldn't possibly be worth the $15 they wanted for it (and now I see that I can buy it for $9.99 elsewhere; grrrrrr). A couple of weeks of screamy bathtimes later when I was back in the store to buy our CARES Harness, I decided to go for it.

Until this summer, I still washed Adriana in the infant bathtub. It kept her reclined, so rinsing her hair was pretty easy and I didn't have to worry about water getting in her eyes. But she was getting too big, and she was beginning to enjoy playing in the water more. Since then, I have hated washing her hair. She won't lean back in the tub and won't let me cover her eyes, so every time I have to rinse her, she screams. And by screams, I do mean screams, not cries. She has really perfected her ear-piercing, horror movie scream.

The Lil Rinser basically looks like an upside-down sun visor with a handle. It has a rubber lip so it fits snuggly to Adriana's forehead but it still soft. It doesn't make shampoos perfect, but we have seen an immense improvement. Adriana doesn't like having it held to her head, so she'll fight me a little bit at first, but once she realizes that the water isn't running over her face, she seems to acquiesce. So I guess I do think it's worth the price. And I'm guessing my neighbors who no longer have to listen to the bathtime screamfest do too.

Product review: CARES Harness

When we flew down to southern California for the July 4th holiday, we realized that just because a child can fly on a parent's lap for free until she's two years old, doesn't mean she should. And on the flight home two days later, which wasn't as crowded, we discovered that our car seat doesn't fit in airline seats--at least not the ones on Southwest. So when we bought our tickets for our flight down for Halloween, I bought a seat for Adriana, and told myself I'd buy a new car seat beforehand. But spent a lot of years in school perfecting my procrastination skills, so even though I had emailed a couple of groups of parents for recommendations on airplane-compatible car seats, suddenly it was the afternoon before our flight and I had nothing. Well, nothing except an indulgent father-in-law and a recommendation for a CARES Harness. I found a local store that carried the harness, and then emailed Brian's dad and explained the situation to him, asking him if he would buy a car seat that night.

The harness was incredibly easy to use: you just lower the tray behind the child's seat, loop the harness over it, and tighten it up (and then lock the tray back into place); the child's arms fit through the straps, just like in a car seat, and the airplane's seatbelt goes through the loops at the bottom. I read the instructions when I was initially on the website, and that was plenty of information to install it when we boarded the plane on Wednesday. I slipped it over Adriana's seat, tightened it up, and buckled her in. She was a bit low to see much out the window, but she was happy to have her own seat anyhow. On each flight she did get a bit antsy--paging through the Sky Mall catalog looking for pictures of dogs and scribbling on her MagnaDoodle only lasted so long. But after she nursed or had her diaper changed or whatever her request was, she was fine with being buckled back in. I think on a longer flight she would get in and out a lot more, but it's really no hassle to take her in and out and when she needed to stay in, it was fairly easy to keep her occupied. And the harness fit neatly into one of our carry-on bags. I am obsessed with being able to travel with only carry-on luggage in spite of having a child* (which I even accomplished when we went to DC for a week), so not having to drag the car seat through the airport felt wonderful.

I think the CARES Harness was worth the $75 I spent. I don't think we do an excessive amount of flying, but this year we are going to have flown down to visit Brian's folks five times, and come January 11, we aren't going to have the option of bringing Adriana as a lap child, even if we wanted to. It's nice not to have an active, 34-inch, 26-pound toddler crammed into a crowded airplane row with three adults, and it's a relief to be free of dragging a car seat through the airport. We'll have to figure something out when we fly some place else. Will we check the car seat at the ticket counter? We did that for Adriana's first flight, back when she was three months old, and then ended up stuck at LAX for a couple of hours after our flight landed, because it had ended up on the flight out of Dulles after the one we were on. If we are renting a car we could rent a car seat. Except for Adriana's second trip, when she was four months old, we tried that, and the car rental agency's car seat's weren't great: first they tried giving us a toddler seat for a child who couldn't sit up by herself for more than a few seconds. There were no instructions for installing the infant seat they finally found for us, and we were never totally happy with how secure it felt. Which leaves us back to gate checking our car seat, which isn't great, but isn't the end of the world, either. Not having to deal with it for our weekends in southern California is certainly nice, and the car seat we have there for Adriana now will last her for years.