Baby Stack

In the style of Uses This, I’ve captured the products and tools we love and have made parenting more enjoyable at 9 months.

Hardware:

Stroller: We prefer to have one-ish do it all stroller (though we also use the Thule Urban Glide 3 for jogging). Joolz Hub+ has allowed us to navigate the busy streets of NYC, is easy to collapse and store away at restaurants, and while could be lighter is not miserable to travel with. We did get a stroller bag for it though because it ripped on our very first flight.

Bed: We didn’t start using the Snoo till our son was 8 weeks old when we decided to start sleep training him. No regrets in sleep training when we did but definitely wish we had the Snoo from the get go. Since I’m short, we now have him in the Newton Pack and Play instead of a crib. As an added benefit, we can move him out of his room when guests visit.

High Chair: While the Tripp Trapp Chair is great, we got a knockoff tray instead since we read the original one doesn’t allow suction from bowls very well. The Catchy is the real MVP though allowing us to reuse food that he accidentally shoves off the tray.

Car Seat: Currently on the lookout for a new car seat.

Software:

I’d be lying if I didn’t say we use Claude almost daily for various baby questions. Often times it would be a simple question like “how old will he be in April” other times I use it to understand the research behind questions I have like “based on research, what has the greatest impact on physical developement”.

Huckleberry was great until he was about 6mos. At that point we had a pretty good routine and didn’t need it. We definitely didn’t need the annual subscription.

We’ve always heard “the days are long, but the years are short” so we wanted to be intentially about making sure we captured lots of pictures and videos. Chatbooks, a monthly 5”x5” photobook subscription, and 1SE have been a great forcing function in make sure we’re capture all the little moments.

Toys:

We (yes we, as in the whole family) still enjoy singing along to the Fisher Price Playmat songs. I’m talking about you “Elephant Song” and “Maybe”. Also highly recommend the John Legend’s cover of “Maybe”.

O ball - This toy has so many uses that it probably deserves it’s own post. Yes, it’s fun to roll, grab, and teeth but you can also stuff things inside the ball to change the weight and make it rattle.

Books:

Research shows that consistent, responsive, back-and-forth interaction is the biggest driver for a child’s language development. Book sharing is the most reliable way to do this and I prefer books I’m most excited and engaged by. We use the public library so we can churn through books without building a huge collection and return them once they’re no longer fun. These are the ones I keep coming back to:

• Jamberry
• If I were a Whale
• All the World
• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Here We Are