DO NOT BUY!!

Do not buy toys for your little one!  O.k., maybe that’s a little extreme but here is the reality…they like the real deal.  My son’s playroom is the kitchen.  Not a toy kitchen, but my actual kitchen.  His toy trunk is the cabinet with the plastic storage containers and lids.  The hundreds of real toys go relatively untouched throughout the day.  “Maybe, he’ll play with this toy remote we bought him so he’ll leave the real remote alone”.  Nope, he will not be duped.  I am pretty sure he said “what is this crap” when we gave him the toy remote.  He has two toy cell phones, but nothing is like mommy’s Samsung.  Fortunately most of his toys were gifts so we aren’t too bummed and truthfully, his real toys do come in handy when we are out on the go.  After talking to several veteran parents and my very own mother, it is universal that infants prefer to play with everyday objects.  If I could go back again, I would only get like 3 toys and then bust out the ziplock.   We actually got to the point where we transferred all of the safe dishes to cabinets in which we allow him to play (get safety locks).  I can cook in the kitchen and he will just play in the cabinet for around an hour.  He also has a few favorite drawers where we keep the wooden spoons and the plastic serving and mixing spoons and any piece of kitchenware that is safe.  It is great and free!

Do not buy the high chair that is stylish.  You know which one I am talking about.  The one that everyone gets that matches their dark wood furniture so that it blends in inconspicuously with the rest of the furniture.  What they don’t tell you is after a couple of meals that thing stands out like a sore thumb no matter what type of wood you purchased.  The reason why?  It is the most difficult piece of furniture to clean.  The food gets stuck in the crevasses preventing you from really getting a good clean.  The food sticks onto the wood so you end up damaging the paint when you try to scrub it off.  Oh and joke is on us, we feed the Boogmeister in the kitchen since we have carpet over the dining area; there is no wood in the kitchen so what does it match?  Pass on this one people.  If we have another, we will sell this high chair and get the reliable old plastic ones.