Inglesina Zuma

My husband and I initially decided that we wanted to use a booster seat with our son. The minute our lease is up (4 weeks!!!) we are moving to Brooklyn, and we know that the less space taken up by baby gear, the better. This was all fine and good until the day my son discovered the power in his legs, and he started lifting his legs and using the table to propel himself backwards. Fortunately he never hurt himself, but I told my mother-in-law about this, and two weeks later we were at Baby Blossom picking out a high chair for James.
It was not love at first sight with the Inglesina Zuma. My first thought? Jeez, this is huge and outrageously expensive. At $299, the Inglesina costs more than the Tripp Trapp and the Svan and doesn't have the fancy carpentry to compensate. But what the Zuma lacks in wooden appeal, it more than makes up for in convenience. The seat has three heights and a removeable tray, so the child can sit at the table like with the Tripp Trapp and the Svan. But the tray is still there for finger food and mess! Remove the tray and lower the seat all the way, and you also have a great little toddler chair. Magnets keep the fabric in place, and there's a five-point harness in addition to the crossbar/pommel/strut between baby's legs.

But you could find all of this out from Inglesina's website. What about the cons? The space between the tray and baby is pretty large, and pieces of food get around the strut and underneath the fabric. Because of the extra room, sometimes toes sneak above the tray (see picture of son wearing blue). Uh, isn't the whole point of having a high chair to keep toes from getting into food? Otherwise, I would feed my son in his carseat! The Zuma also takes up a lot of room while it is open, however, it folds up very tightly and neatly, which was a big selling point for the apartment dweller in me.

Overall? This is not the catholicon for high chairs like the Inglesina Zippy is for strollers. It's a beautiful chair, and my son loves it, but for the money there could be some big improvements. Still, I love the seat and am very happy with it, and from what I hear almost every high chair has its negatives. If you have a disposable income, this is a great seat to purchase, as it is both a traditional high chair and a chair designed to include baby with the family at dinner. Not only that, the seat looks great! To get more of an idea on it check out Babble's review of it.

Since this is Inglesina's first go at the high chair market, I am sure two or three models down the road, this will be the high chair that everyone wants. Until then, putting up with the kinks is way worth it.

The Inglesina Zippy

In my earlier post, I talked about prebaby ambitions and goals. One of our loftier goals is to avoid Chinese made products. This is so much easier said than done. Even the fancy European brands that were made in Europe when my sister (age 9) was a baby are outsourcing to China. This is also a tough goal if your friends and family do not know about your decision. We have been given so many Chinese made toys and we don't want to be "those people." So usually when such a toy is given to us, we do the research on the company and their practices and make our decision from there.

Eventually keeping our goal with toys became close to impossible, and while we are still very aware of the toys we buy, we decided to focus more on big purchases, ie ones that cost more than $100.

First came the stroller search. My husband and I spent 3 hours at this store. We could literally be seen in the parking lot pushing around strollers as my husband got his engineer on, examining the mechanics of each and every one. This store carries every European designed stroller on the market, and we had a blast choosing one. We were surprised to learn, however, that several of the strollers that we were considering were made in China. Suddenly that $800 price tag no longer radiated of European luxury, but of robbery.

Eventually we decided on the Italian made Inglesina Zippy stroller, which I adore. The Inglesina is sturdy and reliable and I like the one handed close. Another cool bonus is that the seat converts to a flat enough back for an infant. I also like that we were able to have an awesome European stroller that was within our price range.


The Postitives:

Compact fold (excellent for city dwellers)
One handed fold, I can hold my son and collapse the stroller while getting onto the Subway
Can be used beginning in infancy without a carseat
Fabric easily wipes clean
Large storage space
Convenient magnetic pocket on visor
The visor can move all the way down to your child's feet so baby stays dry if it rains
The wheels are easily manuevered
Comes with a muff at no extra cost
At $400 it is a "steal" with most European "designed" strollers (ie made in China) costing much more
Despite weighing only 17 lbs (!!!) it is very durable
Made in Italy (if that matters to you)


The Negatives
The lower basket can only be accessed from the front and sides
It takes a few days to figure out how the visor works and how to collapse the stroller with the visor on
The cupholder is a joke
At $400, it is one of the more expensive strollers on the market

As you can see, the positives far outweight the negatives. I seriously had to sit down and think about the negatives for awhile. If you are really stuck on what kind of stroller to get, I highly reccommend this one.

Parenting Choices

I know my husband and I are not the first parents who were adamant about our own childrearing ideals before we had our son. It seems that many people know so much about parenting before they have children, and then said child(ren) comes and suddenly they realize they don't know jacks***.

I count my husband and I among these parenting know-it-alls turned floundering dunces.

Sure, there are the typical ideals "all organic cotton for my baby!" But then there are the attachment parenting crowd ideals. Now don't get me wrong, I consider myself an attachment parent, but the pressure in those first weeks is fierce! You know the drill, "only organic cloth diapers for my little one," "a bottle shall never touch my child's lips until maternity leave is over," "a pacifier will stifle my child's self expression," or perhaps, "a child should always be held and loved AT ALL TIMES, even while they are asleep, you will never see me use a swing or infant seat in my house!" Then, you actually have your child. And by the time you have changed the 15th cloth diaper in 24 hours, your nipples are bloody and cracked and your child won't stop crying unless your boob is in his/her mouth, things start to look a little different.

Eventually, one night at 2AM you find yourself questioning all your prebaby ambition. Is it the lack of sleep? The pregnancy juices escaping your pores? The heightened levels of prolactin eating away at your brain? Whatever it is, you realize that eventually something has to give. You grab the pacifiers your Aunt Mildred gave you (that you swore you would never use), your husband runs out to the store for disposable diapers, while you bust out the free manual pump from the hospital(not to be used for weeks) and put together that swing someone gave you at your shower that you planned on dropping off at Good Will. All the while, you are rationalizing your decisions as you feel the eyes of the invisible parenting judges making their marks.

- But the pacifiers are so well engineered! They are made in Austria!
- My sister-in-law told me that cloth and disposal diapers have an equal ecological impact and she got her environmental management masters at YALE!
- Why should I be the only one in charge of feeding my baby? I am a liberated woman! Parenting should be equal! The pump is the great equalizer!!!
- I shouldn't waste a perfectly good shower gift, right?
- Oh whatever shut up judgemental parents! Do you want to breastfeed my son?

Of course, none of these decisions were permanent. I didn't stop breastfeeding my son, but I occasionally gave myself a break and pumped so that my husband could feed him. We eventually decided that the swing wasn't for us, and we have since gotten rid of it. But disposable diapers and pacifiers? Heck yes, baby. And fortunately for us, soon I figured out how to use the Baby K'Tan and the "holding baby all the time" issue was no longer one. And now my son is old enough to play with his blocks on his own, so the fact that he doesn't like swings or that we don't like putting him in an infant seat is no longer an issue. There were things we did stick to our guns about (like no TV, no carseat except in the car, minimizing the Chinese manufactured goods as much as possible, etc). But I do have to say, my life is so much easier now that I have tapered my parenting style.