Baby Furniture

A big part of our decision to switch from working on the office to working on the kid's room is that special order furniture often takes 8 - 10 weeks for delivery, and we're getting close to 10 weeks away. To make sure that the big furniture arrives before he does, we started out with some furniture shopping. All of these items count as big ticket items, so they need to be gender-neutral enough to work for Next Kid.

1. A chair
We generally understood that babies like to sit in moving chairs when they eat, but had no idea otherwise what to get. We assume that this will be a place we'll spend a lot of time, so we want something really comfortable that can hang around for a couple years.

We started looking at the options online at various stores and through craiglist. We quickly decided that we wanted something upholstered, since we plan to sit in this quite a bit and want to be comfortable. While secondhand is good for furniture - I think I draw the line at secondhand upholstered goods. I found an ad for a used chair with "no visible stains" that sort of creeped me out, so we decided it must be upholstered and new.

We went to visit some stores and sat in a few nice options. I discovered that I cannot get out of a rocking chair without slamming the bottom of the chair into the back of my heel. I also can't seem to rock a rocking chair without using my head - which not only looks ridiculous, but kind of hurts. So, next decision - we need a glider.

so many horrible chairs

Then, we realized that some chairs have really low backs, which prevent you from resting your head. Apparently my husband plans on being asleep while feeding the baby, so it's critical to him that he can rest his head - so next decision - it must be high enough to rest your head.

All of these discoveries eventually led us to this chair. It turned out to be on amazon, so we ordered it.

2. Pouf
It seems like it's critical that babies not only have comfy moving chairs, but foot rests. We didn't want to bother with an ottoman, some of which also move, because it seemed too expensive and too big for our little room. So instead we decided to get a pouf. We were a bit worried about the knit ones, knowing that our cats would love to sharpen their nails on something like that - and didn't want the leather ones that were all around $100. Then we found this guy, and clicked him on his way to us.

3. Crib
Babies sleep in cribs for some amount of time, until they grow big enough for toddler beds. Since the crib is a somewhat short-term item, we wanted to keep costs down on this purchase and get something adaptable to last for a couple stages. Crib safety standards have changed in recent years, so this was also an item that needed to be new. I googled around and found Lucie's List, a website that makes recommendations for baby items in a couple different budget levels. She recommended this one, as the mid-budget option, which will also transform into a toddler bed, day bed, and full size bed eventually. (not sure about the full-size bed, but we can keep the option open.). Seemed straightforward enough, so we clicked and sent it on its way to us.

4. Rug
Another important item to get is the rug. I'm new to this- but I understand that babies tend to be on the floor a lot, so it seems like we should have a rug up there. First condition - needs to be soft, not scratchy, so probably no wool. Second condition - should be at least 5' x 8', if not 6'x 9'. Third - it should be fluffy, not flat so if the kid falls on it, it doesn't hurt. Fourth - there must be some sort of pattern so that if you were playing with cars you could pretend to be driving on a road (this is more for me than the kid - I just love playing with cars on patterned rugs).  Fifth - it should be durable, able to get spilled on, easily cleaned, and relatively cheap. So, after lots of online searching, we finally narrowed it down to this guy. Ordered it.

So, ironically, we changed plans and started working on this room because we were worried we wouldn't get things done in time- largely because baby furniture has such a long delivery time, and instead, because amazon is amazing, our furniture showed up too quickly. We now have the opposite problem of having a lot of furniture here in boxes with nowhere to go yet. We are working on cleaning out the old office and prepping it to be the new kid's room- but aren't ready yet to put in all the new furniture. More on that soon. 

entryway fills with boxes as the furniture arrives too soon