Snot-Nosed Kid
We let Robin have one friend and now he has a runny nose. This is why you should keep them locked in their rooms until they’re twenty-one. I mean, how is this going to impact his career?
Actually, though perhaps I should have kept him quarantined for public health, I took him back to the park today. His friend Jake from yesterday was not there, but another little boy named Leo was with his mother Natasha, and also a different mom and her older son Dino, who we had actually met before. Leo and Dino knew each other too. So it seems that despite my general grumpy misanthropy and reluctance to be “a joiner,” I may be stumbling into something of a playgroup. All the moms seem cool, and Robin really likes the other kids, so chances are that we will see them pretty frequently.
Natasha had a very cool baby-carrier for Leo: it was a structured backpack but it looked a lot cuter than the (to my mind) ugly-ass Baby Bjorn. I asked her about it and she said it was an Ergo, and that she had switched to it from the Baby Bjorn, after the latter had started hurting her back. She had only good things to say about the Ergo.
I was somewhat shamed on another mommy forum after I admitted that I had given up babywearing after only six months. The consensus was that this made me a wimp. But I just couldn’t hack the Moby sling anymore, and neither could Sam—it was killing our backs. Robin really liked it though, and there are supposed to be all kinds of benefits to keeping your child cuddled up to you when you’re out and about. It makes intuitive sense to me that small children need as much cuddling as possible. But the fabric-only slings, while visually attractive, just don’t give the kind of structured support that a pack-style carrier can.
So I think we are probably going to order an Ergo carrier. They’re supposed to work for babies up to three years old. I’ll give a full review when we try it out!
May 24th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
well, we’ve discussed how the lesbian mommy crowd is fond of the Ergo — looking forward to your review and seeing if it is equally satisfactory to one with a male partner! it doesn’t come in very many exciting colors though. but non-painful backs are exciting.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Oh, had we? I’d forgotten.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:03 am
I think the best color combos are the organic line (out of stock at the moment, sadly): http://www.ergobabycarriers.com/babycarriers/category/organics/ . I like the brown.
Although the blue/green combo is what the mom at the park had, and it was more attractive in person than the picture on the site suggests–the colors had a nice dusty, muted quality. Maybe that’s what happens after you throw it in the wash, I dunno.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
The Ergo was actually on the top 10 list of my favorite baby gear that I sent you before Robin was born. Here’s what I had to say about it:
Ergo baby carrier
We didn’t discover this until Isabel was almost a year and a half, but it successfully replaced our Baby Bjorn, sling, Hip Hammock, and a very unwieldy baby/toddler frame backpack. It’s so much more comfortable and works so much better than any of these. To use it with an infant, you’d need the infant insert, which I haven’t tried out. It works as a front carrier for infants and a hip or back carrier for older babies and toddlers up to 40 pounds. We can still carry Ibby in it comfortably on long walks (on our backs). It fits equally well on me and on Hop. It does take a little work to get the hang of all the straps, but it’s so worth it.
******
And a P.S. from the present day: I couldn’t get it to work with the infant insert, and Charlotte is not fond of it as a mom-facing front carrier, but I used it to carry Isabel (almost 3 1/2, and around 30 lbs.) up a hill just today, and it worked great. I think Charlotte will love it as soon as she can ride on our backs or hips. The hip carry is excellent for around the house. We have the black and maroon one.
May 26th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
OMG do you still have that e-mail? Can you send it to me again? I lost it somehow.
Anyway clearly everybody told me about the Ergo but I was probably too swamped at the time to take much in. I think you should all just assume that anything said to me while I was pregnant, or for six months after the birth, has completely fallen out of my head.