Gearhead Mom

I am a toy gearhead. I am a mom. Therefore, I am Gearhead Mom. I review the good, the bad and the (often) ugly in the world of baby and childhood gear.

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Recent Reviews

Chuggington

Chugga Chugga Chugga Chuggington

Do you have a Chuggington freak in your house like I do? Baby G doesn’t go anywhere without his Old Puffer Pete engine.

The show is cute. If you don’t know what it’s about - here’s my reader’s digest: bunch o’ little chuggers learning the Chuggington way of life on the rails. Merriment and lessons abound. Lil chuggers screw up, rise from the ashes and earn some badges via Badge Quest along the way. My kids (almost 6 and almost 3) LOVE IT. And don’t tell anyone, but I do, too. The trains aren’t too whiny, the lessons learned are not too heavy handed and it’s well animated. My husband points out that it’s incredibly fast paced with a lot of quick cuts. I point out that it has riveting plot lines.

But what’s the best part? The swag.

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SmartSeat Chair Protectors

Recovering Your Seat - Toddler Style

[Ed. Note: Thanks to GHM contributor Shauna for writing up this review!]

How did Gearhead Mom know that my sad, stained dining room chairs were making me absolutely bonkers?  Well, somehow she did and was kind enough to let me review the SmartSeat Chair Protectors.  My husband brought a beautiful dining room table with upholstered chairs to our marriage.  These seemed so lovely until my first child started eating solids.  And then they were not.  They were a mess.  Somehow everything from her booster seat got onto the upholstery and it got even worse once she stopped using the booster and half of what was meant for her mouth went instead onto the chair.  Now every chair is grim looking and I always feel a little chagrined to ask anyone outside of our immediate family to sit in them.

So I needed a solution that did not involve me buying new dining room chairs.  And so the SmartSeat covers to the rescue.  These were, no surprise, invented by a mom who must have had messy little ones just like I do. (Aren’t mom’s just the most clever and industrious people that you’ve ever come across?  Yay, Moms!)  They come in khaki and navy and will fit nearly any upholstered dining chair.  They attach to the seat using velcro straps that after one false start were on my chair and looking snappy.  The fit is very good, although not perfect, at least not on my chair, but is a huge improvement over how it had looked.  And the cover is machine washable so that if it ever starts looking sloppy, which it hasn’t yet, I can throw it in the wash and it will be back to new in no time.

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Nosefrida

Nosefrida: The Snotsucker

Reader Lindsay emailed me asking if I’d ever used the Nosefrida, a high-tech snot sucking mechanism for babies and toddlers. My five year old is a champion nose-blower, and my two year old likes to just smear his boogies all over the furniture, so I’ve never purchased one. But I have to admit, I was also quite curious. I put it out there to my parent pals and my friend Matt gladly wrote a paragraph for us on the wonder that is the Nosefrida. Thanks, Matty!

“For once…I’m supposed to suck at being a dad. A few years ago, I was given a little treat like this to help with my child’s constantly leaky nose. Traumatized by the idea of purposefully sucking out the goobers, I decided to put the little contraption in the medicine cabinet to be lost for eternity. Well, my day/night of reckoning came. In a late night act of desperation…I did it. But not without trying every other option. Saline drops? Check. Cold Humidifier? Check. Warm Humidifier? Check. Let them cry until eternity? A possibility, but no.

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Retract-A-Gate

Heaven’s Gate

The Retract-A-Gate is hands-down the best gate ever. I’ve owned several different respected types of gates, so I feel I can make such a bold statement. Sure, safety is the No. 1 concern—and it meets all those requirements with flying colors—but the main reason why I love this gate is because it practically disappears and is so easy to operate.

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Knitted Cupcake Assortment

Mmmmm…Cupcakes

I saw these cupcakes featured over at Oompa way back in 2007. I wanted to get them for Sy, but we’d already met her one toy limit for Christmas, so I just had to sit around and hope that one of Sy’s pals would receive them. Jackpot! Kara got a set and boy are they pretty in real life, even the family dog thinks they should be his toys. They have a good heft to them and are knitted together well enough to withstand a few beatings and chewings by toddlers. Each kid who saw them at Micky’s the other day went straight for them and tried to pop ‘em right into their salivating mouths. And you know, they just look really cute.
Sy gets a bit irked that the knit wrapper on the bottom half does not come all the way off. She pulls with all of her might to rip it off, I fear that someday soon she’ll be successful. I remind her every time that it’s a pretend cupcake and that the wrapper is just a decoration, but I am not sure she believes me. Regardless, she loves to play with them. A good addition to the picnic routine.

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Fancy Nancy

The Counter-Princess-Propaganda Product Program

In celebration of GHM being on the internet waves for just over a year now, we’re reposting some of our favorite reviews. Here’s one of my faves from Jenny. Enjoy (again)!

Editor’s Note: I’d like to introduce the first guest reviewer to the site, my best friend from fifth grade, Jenny. Jenny is an educator and a mom of two girls. Without further adieu, I give you Jenny’s Counter-Princess-Propaganda Product Program.

I am hard-pressed to find a three or four-year-old girl who hasn’t succumbed to Disney Princess madness and whose parents can’t be overheard mumbling “That’s it!  I am calling a moratorium on princess paraphernalia…” as his/her daughter opens the third birthday gift…“Oh, great!  It’s Barbie Swan Princess.”  These are the same parents who painted their daughter’s bedroom in gender-neutral hues and dressed her in overalls, to no avail:  she will only wear dresses (like my daughter—even skirts are suspiciously un-princess-like). 

The Disney Princess Phenomenon is more insidious than carbon monoxide, more silent, more deadly (well, silent in the early stages, anyway…beware the shrill tones, for example, of Disney Princess CD Player).

Nevertheless, folks, my message is two-fold: 
1) give in, to a certain extent, and allow your little girl to express herself, as some of this is natural, and
2) be just as insidious as Disney (and Mattell) and fight ingeniously against the hegemony of the princesses-rule-my-daughter’s-very-existence-syndrome. Try, at least. 

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Mala Easel

Ikea Easel = Easy On the Pocketbook

The thing that annoys me the most about Ikea is their website. I feel like they hide half the products and the other half are available to look at, but only a quarter of those are available to purchase online. Luckily, their totally rad Mala easel is amongst the glorified few available for online purchase.

The Mala easel is like a Kenmore appliance: it’s efficient, lacks most bells and whistle, and abslutely does its job. It has a chalkboard on one side and white board on the other, and it even folds flat when not in use. You can also buy the Mala paper roll separately that you can pull over the white board side for painting or drawing.

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Kidkraft Retro Kitchen

I Asked Santa for a New Kitchen, but My Kids Got One Instead

I have two daughters, two and four, both of whom love to “help” me cook and as well as to sneak water into their bedroom in various containers to make…well, messes. They’ve also outgrown a play kitchen that served us well (the Little Tykes Discover Sounds Kitchen, which is great, by the way, for tight spaces and 1-to-3 year olds. We had an earlier, less gadgety version than this one.

Time for an upgrade (Did I mention that my OWN kitchen needs an upgrade too? Anyway…). I spent quite a bit of time looking at play kitchens and comparing reviews and sizes and features.  Here were my specifications:
1.  Made of wood. We have plenty of plastic toys, so I am not a die-hard wooden-toy mama, but I don’t like the big, NOISY plastic kitchens out there. They remind me of bad model-home kitchens:  overdone and So About To Look Dated.
2.  Big enough to be interesting, but small enough to not Overwhelm MY Small Kitchen. 
3.  Removable Sink Basin. This was a must, as my daughters were going to pour water on this toy whether it held water or not. I wanted to be able to clean this part and carry it away from my overzealous Aquarians if need be.
4.  One piece. While I like some of the kitchens that have separate refrigerators and ovens, they tend to take up more space, and rather needlessly, in my book. 
5.  Two cooks=not too many. I have two budding chefs who want to play at the same time. I looked for a kitchen with space for more than one little culinary genius—and I liked kitchens that functioned like islands, and which my girls could walk around, but I DON’T HAVE ROOM FOR AN ISLAND IN MY OWN KITCHEN, so finding free floor space for the toy was not going to work. 
6.  Less than $200. That requirement immediately disqualified anything from Pottery Barn, for example.

Enter the Kidkraft Retro Blue Kitchen, which we all love, kids and parents and neighborhood children alike. Some reasons it’s great:

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Magformers Magnetic Building Set

The Magnificent Magformers

Ed. Note: This just in from my sister, Gwen. Her daughter is seven, so we’ll get a good round of older kiddo toys reviewed post-Christmas. Thanks, sistah!

I’m usually right about the toys T is going to like.  I was wrong about Magformers. She likes things with personality (little creatures, storybook figures, etc.), things that torture parents (like Polly Pockets), or things that are crafty. She is not into building things like Magformers by Rainbow Products.  We don’t do Legos or blocks (and never have, much to my husband’s dismay).  So when I saw the Magformers unwrapped in the holiday crush I was lock-solid certain it would be a miss.

Boy was I wrong. 

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Recent Reviews

Chugga Chugga Chugga Chuggington
Recovering Your Seat - Toddler Style
Nosefrida: The Snotsucker
blankyclip: A Lovie’s Best Friend
Bending Wax Stix (instead of my ear)
Fun Winter Pop Up Book

Gearhead Mom Gift Boxes

Gearhead Mom Gift Boxes feature fun gift ideas based on age or theme. Need a present for your eight-year-old nephew’s plane themed birthday party? We’ve got you covered. Want to give a theme-based gift centered around gardening? No problem!

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