Without further ado, I give you the best and the worst from items we purchased in August Oops! July. Are you ready? Awesome. Me too.
The best thing I purchased this month was this stellar water bottle made by Camelbak. It’s BPA free. It comes in several different colors (and two sizes!) and you can drink from it standing up, lying down, upside down, while running, doing cartwheels, having sex—you name it. It’s awesome. (Even Em likes to drink out of it. He can’t use a sippy cup and doesn’t like to feed himself a bottle, but he’ll drink out of my water bottle. Babies are weird.)
We got ours at Whole Foods but you can order them online as well. You won’t be let down. Promise.
The worst thing we purchased recently was the Play Spot flooring created by Skip Hop. It was a great idea in theory. Tobyjoe even went out of his way to pick it up one night after work. And it looked great! We were so excited! Here was a padded floor for Em to play (and fall down) on, one that may even keep our neighbors from banging on our pipes every five minutes.
Boy were we mistaken. And I tried hard to keep everything together for the first few days. But Emory was just so bloody good at taking it apart. Before I knew it, the thing was in ruin, pieces strewn about everywhere, two in each hand, one in his mouth. What a mess. What a mistake. What a waste of 80 bucks.
I don’t recommend this flooring for babies who: crawl, play, walk, move or fart.
Also, if you have cats and you live in a railroad apartment? You’re just plain stupid for buying this one.
(Stick with diaper bags, Skip Hop. Your diaper bags are awesome.)
Ha ha – went through the exact same thing. The night we bought the skip hop floor, the midnite shift (meaning the cats, Tippy and Smallmouth) got right to it. By morning it was a distant memory. We had it coming, tho. What were we thinking bringing a wildly random, alien life form AKA baby into their once perfect life?
This may come as a surprise, but most of the destruction was from Emory. He simply WOULD NOT allow for that thing to be together in any way, shape or form. It was just not an option. Plus, he likes to chew on the little attach pieces.
The cats barely touched it in a destructive way. They did get their fur on it, however.
Babies! THEY ARE DESTROYERS! At least in this house.
Oh yeah—we have the exact same ones. Baby takes apart the pieces and eats them, dogs ruin the foam by digging their nails into it, and it shows dirt like crazy. I moved them to our bathroom upstairs (where she plays while I shower) and replaced the ones downstairs with FLOR tiles (though they are a hair magnet).
because i’m a PITA, “best and the worst from items we purchased in August”? Last August? ;p I had to puzzle over that one!
I had thought about buying those interlocking foam tiles…but my husband vetoed it. Good thing, apparently!
My husband uses one of the Camelbak backpacks when he cycles, and our 2.5-year-old has loved to drink from that thing since the bottle days. They should launch a kid’s line.
I concur with the Camelbak BPA-free bottle recommendation. I bought two at an athletics store. Then, when looking for a different cap for them at REI (the original bottles I bought didn’t have the sports cap), I found a larger bottle, which my husband had to have, and two sports caps for the original bottles. At first, the whole straw thing was a bit different, but now we both love them.
The bottles simply rock.
Weird. I received the PlaySpot as a gift from the Barbarians and it has been in our living room from the minute Logan was born. She has picked up the corners a few times but most often just likes to hang out there playing with her toys. Now I am worried she isn’t curious enough ;)
We had an alphabet version and grace would pick out all of the pieces like the inside of the “O” and pretend it was food. She would make soup and have tea parties with them. There must have been 30 pieces (also had 1-10 tiles) and we got sick and tired of trying to find all of the pieces at the end of every day. Damn thing sits in a drawer.
Shelby, I think your only “problem” is that you have a baby girl and not a baby destroyer. This flooring exists and is sold by the dozens. It works really well for some babies, probably the same babies who allow their mamas to take them to a mother/baby yoga class (lucky people!) This just doesn’t work for our little monster. (Who really does like to destroy everything he possibly can. really.)
Also, Shelby, Tobyjoe just asked: do you want an extension? We’ll happily give you ours. There are some teeth marks, otherwise, it’s good as new.
Rachel: I remember making soup with everything when I was a kid. Even dirt and mud.
Did you try gluing/attaching it to something ?
i feel like you could get a cheap sheet, then find some glue to affix the panels onto to create larger pieces, then cut that up into something he can’t destory
Thank you for posting the water bottle! I’ve been looking for a water bottle for a few months now (I’ve been toting around bottled water since September of last year), but couldn’t make myself okay with the kleen kanteen bottles and had a friend put me off of the Siggs when he told me all about aluminum and how it’s bad for you. These actually look like decent bottles.
Flor tiles! Flor tiles! Flor tiles!
http://www.flor.com/
i used the sticky plastic roll/paper stuff you get for covering childrens books to the back of our foam blocks and they never were unstuck again…but they do get dirty so now I have moved them around her cot as marble floors and climbing babies make me nervous. I’m sure you’ll find a use for them!
Yes I will gladly take the extra pieces off your hands and prevent them from ending up in a landfill. I will be in the NYC office next Thursday if Toby can bring them in. Otherwise we can arrange another pickup at some point.
I wish I had known you were going to buy that piece of shit Skip Hop flooring. I would have barricaded you in your homw to prevent the transaction. We had a TERRIBLE experience with that product
– even wrote to customer service and sent photos along –and they never responded. Skip Hop sucks!!!! We did find amazingly wonderful childsafe flooring at greatmats.com. It’s faux wood foam!!!! It is pleasing to the eye and great for the kid. We get tons of compliments and regret not carpeting the whole place in it. http://www.greatmats.com/products/wooden-foam-mats.phpi’ve been finally browsing online and in stores for baby necessities for registry stuff. holy crap is there a lot of stuff out there!! it’s already driving me insane and i haven’t bought one single item yet!