Baby Loves and must haves: Months 6 - 9

Time for another edition of our baby must-haves.  If you missed the earlier editions, you can see months 0-3 here and months 3-6 here.

1. Balboa Baby Shopping Cart Cover.  Unfortunately, I haven’t figure out how to make this fit the SuperTarget carts yet, but it fits every other cart, and high chair, so it still makes the list.  It folds up into itself, has a large strap to keep her in and two loops on the corners for attaching toys or her sippy strap.  Plus, I think it’s pretty. :)  I know these aren’t for everyone, and some people think they are too much of a hassle, but after reading an article that talked about how shopping carts are dirtier than most public restrooms, I think I will stick to using this and washing it when we’re done. 

2.  Puffs.  Is it cheating to put a food item on here?  These aren’t the healthiest thing, but they are a “must-have” because having a handful of these with me at all times enables me to finish grocery shopping or running an errand.  Hadley LOVES her puffs – especially the sweet potato flavor (M thinks they taste like fortune cookies??).  Is it wrong to use food to keep my daughter occupied while I run errands?

3. Convertible Car Seat.  (Not everyone will need this so soon, but we’ve got a big girl on our hands!)  After doing a lot of research, and purchasing and returning one, we ended up with the Britax Boulevard 70CS.  We plan to keep Hadley rear-facing in her seat until she is at least 2 years old (For why – see here or here or – this is a really good link) so I wanted a seat that had high weight & height limits for rear-facing.  Also, because we have captain’s chairs in the Tahoe, I can’t have her in the center of the car, so I wanted a seat that had extra side-impact protection.  This seat was really easy to install using the LATCH system in the car (although it took me a couple tries to get the recline angle right), has an easily adjustable harness, little velcro spots to keep the straps out of the way while you’re trying to get a wiggly baby in there, and the cover (which was one of the few that I thought was cute) can come off and be washed without uninstalling the seat!

 

4.  Sippy Cups.  The two that Hadley loves are the Playtex Little Gripper Straw Trainer cup…

and the Munchkin Mighty Grip Sippy Cup…

We started sippy cups around 6 months with Hadley, and it wasn’t until about 8 1/2 months that she really caught on and could drink out of them consistently, but they still make this list because I think it was important for her to get the practice!  That, and she loved to chew on the Munchkin cup.  I think it felt good on those sore little gums!  We also tried the Dr. Brown’s and Tommy Tippee cups, but she doesn’t like them. 

5.  Speaking of sippy cups – I couldn’t live without our sippy strap!  Hadley thinks it is SO fun to pick up her sippy and throw it down, and this keeps me from washing it over and over and over.  We got ours from Oh Sew Cute Designs and Amanda is great to work with if you need one! 

That’s all I’ve got this time.  Everything else that I “can’t live without” right now is something that I’ve already mentioned on one of the previous lists!  Happy Friday, friends!