Think Before You Buy

Or, Courtney’s Tips For Buying Baby Clothes as Gifts

This is about baby gifts.  We have been so fortunate to receive many wonderful baby gifts.  But we’ve also gotten some that make you want to ask what the buyer was thinking.  With that said, here are a few baby gift-buying tips based on our experience:

1. Consider the season when buying gifts for a certain age range.  For example, if the child is born in December, don’t buy six-month winter clothes.  Especially for a holiday like Christmas.  If the baby will be nine months at Christmas, don’t get 0-3 month items.
2. What type of mother are you buying for?  Is she a practical dresser, or does she like frilly, fancy, event-specific things?  If she’s more practical, get staple items such as onesies, pants, zipped sleepers, bibs or anything that will be a go-to item on a daily basis.
3. Look at the complexity of the outfit from an putting on/taking off perspective.  Is it a three-piece item that has buttons at the back of the neck that are hard to get to?  Is it more complicated to put on that other items of the same function?  New parents can be worried about the delicacy of their baby.  Having to fight with a three-piece outfit with tiny buttons instead of a single item can make an outfit sit in the closet and never get worn.  One-piece outfits with zippers or snaps are a big favorite in this house.
4. Consider the weather.  We can’t help it, we always think the baby is cold as mothers.  Short sleeve outfits and shorts only seem like the right thing in just the right weather.  I go to long-sleeves and long pants or full one-piece with footies so much of the time, because I know the baby is fully covered.
5. Onesies, onesies, onesies.  Little babies move around a lot when lying down and crawling.  Onesies do something no shirt can do.  They stay down and don’t ride up.  I love cute shirts, but before the baby is walking, onesies are the way to go.

We do love the items we’ve gotten that don’t meet the suggestions above, but for my favorite gifts, it’s not so much about how adorable and cute they are, but how they meet the best needs of the baby's age and activity level.  You can probably guess I’m one of those practical mothers at this point?

The Big Boy Update:  We do not encourage tantrums.  At all.  But I realized tonight we have a problem.  When we sit him down for a meal, he starts to yell until he has food in front of him.  Or if he wants a higher-value food we get that to him too.  We wrote it off that he was just really hungry, but we were mistaken.  When you’re out at a restaurant and he starts to yell, some behavior modification needs to happen.  So, we have some breaking of a bad habit to do starting tomorrow.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Everyone says she has an angelic face, or that she is a “pretty baby.”  Not that our son wasn’t cute.  But she seems to have an ideal baby face.  Hopefully she’ll get even prettier as she grows up.