One!

Happy birthday, little ball of energy (aka Matthew)! A year ago at this moment, I was wondering if this baby would ever be born! And then he was, 30 minutes from now. And suddenly we had a baby! Yay!

Usually on birthdays, I think people write sappy letters about how great the past year was or how much their lives have changed for the better or how things will never be the same, and the original birthday was the best day of their lives, blah blah blah... But I'm not feeling very reflective, and it's pretty obvious how we feel about Chatty Matty, and all those letters end up sounding the same anyway, so...

I'm going to write about some of the stuff that was so helpful to us getting through the first year. And by first year, I primarily mean the first couple of months.

Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play Sleeper: Matt slept in this next to our bed for about 3 months, maybe 4. He also lounged around in it a lot when we were eating supper or watching tv and he was napping or just looking around. It was great to be able to ferry him around the house in it when he was asleep. Also great that I could just lean out of bed to look at his little face in the middle of the night and make sure he was still breathing. Ha ha.

SO worth the $50, even though its useful life wasn't that long, timewise. We bought this from Kohl's with a gift card from all my coworkers at Origin Technologies. (Side note: This is a game I like to play, to feel thankful for things and people: "Oh, now I'm going to use the Chris Hightower tea kettle to heat some water. Then I'm going to use the Christa Slaton vacuum cleaner. Matthew's wearing the Stephenie Walker reindeer outfit now, but he'll need to change into the Debbie Schott sleepsack later.")

Boppy: Matthew and I used the Boppy every single day for 11.5 months for breastfeeding, except when we were on vacation. Talk about indispensable. When he was tiny, it wasn't so great because I'm all tall and stuff, but after the first two months or so, so convenient. He also took some naps in it and had fun crawling over it when he first started crawling. Thanks for this, Lisa!

Philips Avent Manual Breast Pump: Also a great help in the early days. I got to leave the house by myself sometimes! Very easy to use and clean. Great for easing my oversupply discomfort when Matthew started sleeping 7- to 9-hour stretches at 2.5 months old.

 

Receiving blankets: Great for swaddling, spit-up, warmth, fun... Still keep one in the diaper bag now to use for messes or as a towel, since Matt goes full speed ahead into any source of water he sees. We have 4 (from the Burn City Rollers!) but could have used about 10 in the early days.

Cloth diapers: I am pretty much lazy and hate shopping. Also, I dislike spending money. Voila! Cloth diapers! No need to leave the house for more diapers. No worries about getting low on them and needing to run to the store. Cheap! Contrary to many people's claims that the cost of washing more loads of laundry with cloth diapers outweighs or equals the cost of buying diapers, our utility bills have not increased at all in the past year. So, cheap and convenient. (Diaper sprayer is nice, too, but wouldn't be quite as hard to live without.)

I think that's about it for my most useful baby things list. Some other stuff we use a lot are a hand-me-down stroller, Infantino baby carrier, changing pad, and high chair, but I'd probably rank them on a secondary list. What's been your most used and most useful baby items?