Baby Dipper Bowl Review

When my twins were infants, I entered a blog giveaway. The prize was a pair of baby bowls. I entered and surprisingly, I won. I wasn’t looking for a baby bowl, but what the heck, it was free. I’m so glad I did! What struck me most is that it was a nice weight and it had a rubber bottom that grips the table. On the twin’s next feeding, I promptly used it. I loved it!

I have fed my girls by setting the bowl down on the table. But the problem with typical plastic baby bowls is that they slide whenever I get a spoonful. Several times I have to push the bowl back into the middle of the table before it falls to the floor. And on occasion that I feed the babies something thick, I couldn’t even get a spoonful out without using both hands. With the Baby Dipper Bowl, I was able to just keep it on the table without worrying it would eventually fall off the table. This leaves my other hand free to do a whole lot of other things like preventing baby from swatting at the incoming spoonful of food.

The Baby Dipper bowl quickly became my favorite. I packed the bowls, and the spoons it came with whenever we visited the in-laws 3 hours away. The spoon was great too. It rested on the bowl nicely, unlike other baby spoons that are usually heavier than most bowls – which then tips over whenever the spoon is put back in the bowl. When my twins entered toddlerhood, the Baby Dipper bowls were excellent. It allowed them to practice their grip of the spoon without having to chase after a constantly moving bowl. It was less mess for me to clean up – always a good thing!

Today, I’m still using my Baby Dipper bowl with my 7 month old. He is still new to solid foods and grabs and swats at the spoon coming to him. With one hand free, I’m able to hold his hand at bay so that the food can make a clear landing to his mouth.

The bowl is BPA-free, lead-free and phthalate free – though perhaps the most impressive of all is that it was invented by a mom of 2 sets of twins. 

***This post was originally posted by me on Minti.com here.

Multi-room baby video monitor

After researching video monitors for a couple of months, I finally bought a Lorex LW2003 Live Snap Video Monitor from Amazon. The monitor and 1 camera was around $130 and it has fluctuated up and down since then. I also bought 2 more additional cameras at the same time, and then later bought one more. The cameras run somewhere from $70-$90.

I have 4 small children and all the bedrooms are upstairs, with the master bedroom downstairs. The main reason why I wanted a video monitor with a talk back feature is so that either my husband and I wouldn't need to stumble our way up the stairs when one of the kids yell for something in the middle of the night.

Overall I love this monitor and it's the cheapest I've found. But with all the neat features to love, there are some cons. Let me start there.

CONS:

1. There is a stand-by mode called VOX that doesn't work right. VOX is a mode whereby the sound and video goes on standby and only turns on when a sound activates it. You can set the sound sensitivity. For example, if you have 2 cameras that are on VOX mode, the monitor will be on stand-by (no video, no sound), unless of the cameras detect a sound. If the camera detects a sound, that camera will pop up on the monitor. Or at least this is how it's supposed to work. The problem is, 2 of my cameras make the monitor turn on even without detecting a sound. One day I experimented on it, and put it in a room and changed the setting to detect the loudest sounds only. This made the monitor always on. Then I changed it to the softest sound only, and the same thing happened. I also found that 2 of my cameras work well on VOX setting, but the other 2 don't. So I just quit using this feature.
2. The charging base for the monitor is weird. It has a mini-usb port sticking out. I have to be careful aligning the monitor to the base when I charge it.
3. Battery: Battery charge doesn't last long in a dark room because it has to use the night-vision. I found 2 hours to be a max in a dark room, but up to 5 hours in bright room.
4. Camera: This feature is a little silly. The camera can take a picture but very low quality. So why bother?

PROS:

1. Power-save mode: On this mode the monitor goes dim but the sound still works. I have 4 cameras and I use this mode while the camera cycles through each camera (8 seconds each camera). The sound works and the video only turns on when I press any button.
2. Talk back: I can talk to each kid by using the monitor. I hold down the dialog bubble button and my voice comes out of the camera. The sound is great and doesn't come out booming. I have never scared any of my kids by talking out of nowhere. When one of my kids ask for me to come up just to say goodnight for the 10th time, I can talk to them through the monitor.
3. The camera can be mounted, or can be propped up. This is excellent because I can take it to the backyard and monitor the kids there when I can't be out there with them. In the rooms, I use 3M velcro and it works great.

So overall, I love this monitor. There are more features, but I just wanted to mention what sticks out the most. Because I use this mainly at night, I have the cameras charged through the night. If I don't, it dies in the middle of the night. But in order to preserve the battery life, I unhook it from the charger and just leave it on during the day. Lorex doesn't mention to do this, but I've burned out many a batteries by leaving this plugged, so I've learned my lesson.

Forward facing 'buggies' stresses babies?

I'm severely disturbed by this little bit of news that reads "Babies Stressed Out By Buggies". It appears on Yahoo UK & Ireland. There may very well be something about having babies and small children facing out into the world and how it affects them, but this so called study is hardly the one to herald trust-worthy findings.

The news reports of about 3,000 parent-infant pairs in the study, but yet when it came to the experiment where they concluded,"Our data suggests that for many babies today, life in a buggy is emotionally impoverished and possibly stressful. Stressed babies grow into anxious adults," it only talks about 20 babies participating. What? Really? In an experiment with 20 babies, that's a heck of a bold statement to make. Either that or that 20 babies were picked from all the corners of the world, or at least representative of the population they're trying to represent.