The Ultimate Nursery Item

The nesting ottoman!  Do you already have one in your house? (My sister Maggie did, and I must disclose that like all good ideas, using a nesting ottoman in the nursery came from her. Although, I am pretty sure that I was the one who originally made Maggie buy hers, so... maybe it was my idea all along?) When I was looking for a side table for the nursery, I couldn't find anything that I really loved the look of, so I just decided to go with something practical. Maggie had already moved her nesting ottoman into her nursery and it was doing the trick, so I decided to stop searching and just go out and buy a nesting ottoman of my own.

And I'm so glad I did! In eight months, we have used it every single day for: 1. Storage 2. a Side Table 3. Seating 4. an Activity Cube and 5. a Walker/Climber/Cruiser.  Is there any other nursrey item that you can think of that is so multi-faceted?

When I first came home from the hospital, Maggie had stocked my ottoman with fruit roll-ups and granola bars and Twizzlers (Oh my!), and from day one, I kept my Lanolin, little nursing notebook, pen, and water on the tray for quick and easy access. Now, we keep clean-up supplies inside and use the tray to keep Will's favorite books at the ready. After Christmas, we will probably use it to store and rotate toys.

The extra little ottoman is the only extra seating (besides the floor) in our nursery, and once we started our bedtime routine, it became my place to sit and pray and sing while Jason gives Will his bottle (and sits and prays and sings). So I got A LOT of daily use out of this item for the last eight months, but now that Will is moving and cruising (which is a technical baby term, by the way), every member of the family uses this item every day.

Will uses the different levels of the ottomans to pull himself up and cruise from ottoman to ottoman, ottoman to crib, and ottoman to recliner.  Sometimes, he pushes the small ottoman around, using it kind of like a walker. I can set temping items on top and (wallah!) instant activity cube. (We bought Will this activity cube for Christmas, and I am going to laugh if he likes the make-shift ottoman one better.)

Also, the soft padded edges mean that a fall elicits no more than a surprised look. And if it survives until a time when we no longer need it in the nursery, our nesting ottoman is neutral enough that we can use it in many other rooms of our house for years to come.

Can it get more ultimate than that? Well, maybe if it helped put Will to sleep.

The Ultimate Baby Item (that you probably already own)

Even though we had watched Happiest Baby on the Block and practiced with our new niece, Jason and I had a lot of trouble soothing Will when he was first born because (1) we were clueless new parents and (2) Will had some medical and dietary issues. We quickly learned that movement was the key to a (somewhat) quiet baby. My husband's best move was speed walking around the house. After a few laps, Will would usually quiet down. I practiced the mommy bounce-shuffle walk at all hours of the day and night, tried the bouncy seat with the vibration thing and all three configurations of our swing over and over again, and rocked until our rocker became squeaky, but nothing really worked consistently. I had read that newborns could be fussy, but I also read that they were supposed to sleep and that wasn't happening.

Then, one night while nursing and scouring the internet for help (because I refused to believe my baby was just "colicky"), I read that sitting on the corner of a bed and bouncing is soothing for many babies.  We tried it the next day and were elated by how well it worked.  Not only did Will seem content, but we could sit and sooth at the same time.  When we mentioned our new discovery to my sister, she said nonchalantly, "Yeah, you can do the same thing with an exercise ball." And then our lives changed.

We had not one but two exercise balls in our garage. Jason brought the one with the sand in it into the living room and placed it in a little nook next to the fireplace, and we sat and bounced for the next three months, first just to sooth Will and then to put him to sleep. The bouncing motion worked so well, that I started timing how long it took me to put Will to sleep. At first it was five to seven minutes, then five flat, then three, and then only two minutes on the ball, and he would fall asleep every time. I felt like we had discovered some type of blue bouncy magic.