I knew you were thinking of David Coulthard as soon as I read that far in. You never know, there may very well be some Alain Prost or Nigel Mansel baby wipes out there somewhere.

I like the previous model

Congrats

We have a Quinny Buzz 3-wheeler too, it's very good. One little problem is that inflating the back tyres is a little tricky unless you have an old-school bike pump as the valve is so close to the hub it's hard to get the modern style floor pumps attached... just fyi!

We also ended up with a Zapp (4 wheel) for travel which folds impossibly small and also comes with a travel bag - great for aircraft holds. The maxi-cosi seat fits in the zapp too.

The baby monitor we got was this one: Philips SCD589 - has a temperature monitor/alert plus all sorts of fun to be had with remotely controlling lullabys. That and it uses standard AAA NiMHs so when they eventually bite the dust (full cycles for several hundred days will do it) they're easy to replace.

We ended up with this baby chair: Svan chair - not cheap, but very practical (adjusts up to practically a full size chair), very secure, dishwashable table top and easily washable cushions too.

That's about all the recommendations for gadgets... after that you're on your own

Hugo

+1 for the Diaper Champ. NO twisting. No refills, just standard kitchen garbage bags. Plus, you get a very satisfying "thunk" when the piston thingy shoves the diaper down into the bag.

We went with the Graco MetroLite stroller and Graco Snug Ride infant seat. The MetroLite is light weight, folds up, and the SnugRide easily snaps in without any additional attachments. The stroller also has a basket underneath and two cup holders up top. Cup holders are absolutely critical.

As baby gets older and outgrows the infant car seat, go Britax for the toddler years.

You'll also want one of those mirror thingies for the car, the ones that let you and the baby see each other through the rear-view mirror.

I'll post back if I think of anything else.

It may be obvious that I would post this, but if you can get Recaro seats for your car they do make the difference - a bit of decent head restraint for hard corners... :-)

For some reason we ended up with 9 buggies/strollers but they are all good for different things. We have a great Graco which is good for holidaying as it folds and unfolds with one hand (so easy for taking through airports) and doesn't sink into sand very much. We have a 3-wheel off-roader which was great for taking the little ones hiking, and a McLaren 'umbrella' style one which was very simple and light once they got a bit bigger.

The Britax system we got for our first baby was very reassuring, but ultimately a huge waste of money, heavy and clunky.

Joining late to this thread, a couple thoughts:

- Kid car seats seem to come in two equivalence classes: docking station models for infants, and larger, reversible seats that are good from 0 through 40 pounds (18 kg). We went with the larger seat, from day one, and got a lighter stroller than any of the ones designed to be docking stations. In practice this setup occasionally required removing a sleeping baby from the car (on pins and needles, as it were), but the benefit of having less weight to haul around was a godsend.

- We never bothered with a baby monitor. Our daughter was quite loud enough, all by herself.

- We never bothered with a dedicated "diaper bag". Instead, we bought a Timbuk3 shoulder bag, which can hold tons of baby crap, and has a rubber lining to hold in, umm, leaky bits. That bag has now been repurposed into a general carry-around, which never would have happened had we gotten some cute kiddy bag.

- Pacifiers are quite personal. Our kid did well with the soothie pacifiers that our hospital gave out. The same firm makes "wubbanub" pacies attached to beany-baby style stuffed animals. Our kid was quite attached to this, and by virtue of being graspable, she was (later) able to pick it up and place it back in when it fell out.

- We had the Diaper Champ. Worked great for #1's. For #2's, the stink still got through (at least to my wife's sensitive nose), so we'd dump those in the trash can outside.

- Never forget, that a new baby is an excuse to buy yourself lots of camera and video gear. Repeat after me: "it's for the baby." Among other things, I'll offer a plug for the Sony hard-drive-based camcorders, which connect via USB to Sony-branded DVD burners, letting you crank out DVDs for the grandparental units without having to import things into your computer and so forth. I made a few DVDs with iMovie, but the effort vs. reward isn't really there. Grandparents really don't care for polish on the videos. They just want something now, now, now.

- While sorting out our wedding, I often joked about the wedding-industrial complex, and their ability to try to sell us things that we didn't need. The baby-industrial complex is far, far worse. It's staggering how many utterly useless things they want to sell you. My favorite is probably the wipe warmer. (You don't need one.) Similarly, they have all these saucer-like contraptions that you can drop your kid in, with all sorts of shiny buttons and things for them to drool on. You pay more and more money for more shiny things, with some sort of implicit guilt if you don't get the top of the line gizmo.

- Along those lines, print 4x6 pictures via Internet upload at your neighborhood pharmacy or Costco or whatever. Much easier and cheaper than monkeying around with color inkjet printers.

- Whatever you do, try to avoid battery-powered toys. Half of the stuffed animals now make noise if you squeeze them in the right way. There are few things worse than stumbling around at night, stepping on some damn stuffed animal, and having it start singing a song.

The Baby Bjorn carrier was well used by my daughter and I, less so by my wife. But any carrier that you are comfortable wearing is fine, it is the getting out and about without a stroller which is where it comes in handy - you don't have to watch your shopping cart like a hawk as the baby is strapped to you. It made getting from Boston airport economy parking to the gate for a flight to Ireland with a 6 month old a breeze. Plus it is darn cute.

We also have their bibs, a bit bulky for taking places, I just strap it on to the diaper bag to my wife's annoyance, but great at catching a meal full of spills.

A small diaper bag, just enough to hold a few diaper, wipes, clean set of clothes, snack and a sippy cup, rather then the typically full size diaper bags which haul a lot more and can be identified as been suck from 50 yards / 45.72 meters. This is so you can be mobile with child.

Poop bags - there is probably a more technically term, but they are small blue bags that can block the stink of a babies diaper. You are not going to need these until they start on solids, but given their blocking strength they are clearly a by product of some military program. They come in boxes of 50 for ~$5, at BRU they are in a generic yellow/brown box. Because you can't just toss a poopy diaper in a public bathroom trash can.

Second car seat - sure with LATCH / ISOFLEX it is possible to move seats around a lot easier, but that requires thought, buy the second seat / seat base and get going.
Books, touch and feel books, flap books, board books, they are all good.

Breast pump - this enabled us give my wife feeding breaks and hence allowing her to get a solid 4 to 6 hours sleep. Plus I got quality time with our daughter.

I am sure there were other things, but these are they ones that stick in my mind.

One of my first favourite memories of my sort-of goddaughter was getting her such an "activity set" for her first Christmas. She would crawl over it and hit the various things (drum things, squeaky things, rattly things) that made noise when you hit them. The set came with a little plastic drum-stick, which I kept trying to put into her hand; she wasn't interested at first, but eventually crawled onto the activity set still carrying it, which hit it against the drum thing and made a much better noise than she'd yet made with her fists. She stopped dead, looked thoughtfully for a moment at the stick in her hand, and proceeded to gleefully bash the hell out of the drum. You could almost see her thinking, "Oh, hey! Tool use!" -- it was a very "2001" moment.

Peter

Yeah, my six-month old explores those saucer things endlessly. And the bouncer...she spends hours a day in that thing. That said, we ended up with piles of crap that baby-industrial complex said we needed (and my wife believed) and we have never used. Kinda pisses me off to think about it. Hmph, even 90% of the crap that I recommended above we could do without if we needed to.

We also have one of those stationary sit-in activity centres, one of the many things we received from Erin's cousin. I'm glad we've been able to avoid purchasing a lot of these limited-time use items, and if we're lucky enough to have a second child we'll hopefully pass along whatever we can that's still in decent shape. A lot of plastic goes into that stuff and I hate to think about how many might be thrown out.

We're also lucky to have a lot of second-hand baby places around here which carry all kinds of these toys/products as well as a large selection of clothing. I think we'll be ok on the clothing front for a little while as we're getting a large delivery of cousin's clothing tomorrow.

I'll post up some links to anything exceptionally cool Erin receives this weekend at her shower.

For ease of use and comfort, nothing has beaten our REI Infant Down Suit in the wintertime. It works pretty well in most colder temps due to the fact that you can unzip and fold down the front to cool or zip it up to the chin, and you can throw the kid in there without a lot of layers because the down is pretty warm. Hands/feet fold in or out so you don't have to put shoes/gloves on. Unavailable right now but I'm sure that REI will have a new model out in a few months for the winter season. #1 pick for me.

Ditto on the Timbuk2 bag. A nice messenger bag is suitable enough to carry all your junk, waterproof in case of interior or exterior spills and much less dorky and re-usable than a diaper bag.

One of the foldable diaper changing mats with a small amount of room for storage is great. You can lay it out on any flat surface or dirty changing table to give a nice area to change. Something like the ones below:

http://www.amazon.com/Built-NY-Cushy-Cha...280&sr=1-25
http://www.amazon.com/Kalencom-Quick-Change-Kit-Doodlebugs/dp/B001P5HLWO/ref=pd_cp_ba_0
http://www.amazon.com/Kiddopotamus-Chang...280&sr=1-47

I still have no opinion on baby stuff, but if you're looking at messenger bags, I'd suggest looking at Tom Bihn. For one thing, unlike Timbuk2, none of their bags are made in China.

I got one of their Checkpoint Flyer bags, and it's great. It works as advertised at airport checkpoints. And it even got a positive comment from a TSA employee. It's probably not the right model for a diaper bag replacement, but I'm sure one of their other models would be.

Whichever you get, just make sure it is waterproof. I can't tell you how many times we've spilled something inside the bag (lid comes off sippie cup, etc.) and what saves the car/room/restaurant is the bag being waterproof. One big compartment is also better than a bunch of extra pockets on the outside, organize the stuff inside with a few smaller pouches.

If you buy a custom messenger bag from Timbuk2 (I ordered mine custom about 12 years ago) they still make it in San Francisco.

One gift that surprised me (mainly because I hadn't given it any thought) was the Bum Genius DIaper Sprayer. It's just a rebranded general-use sprayer that ties into your toilet's water supply line, but seems generally useful. Took me about 2 minutes to install.

It's funny reading the comments at sites like Amazon. Thing thing will absolutely not leak if installed correctly (unlike one comment). If someone's getting water spraying al over the place chances are they shouldn't turn the tap on all the way. Most people don't have common sense, and when it comes to comments, generally it's people who like to listen to themselves talk that write the best negative ones.

The Diaper Champ doesn't seem to be available in Canada, but after evaluating how the various similar products operate (manuals), I think it's definitely the right one to get. I'll have to pick it up in/around Buffalo in a week or two.

I already used the prospect of a child as one of the reasons for acquiring my Nikon D300 in late 2007. Now it's the reason for light stands, some backdrops and a couple of extra flash heads.

Ah, but if you had read post #324154 more carefully, you would have given it thought, because I recommended it in said post!

I think I have a mild case of what my wife calls "baby brain" I remember clear as day now having read your message with that recommendation. I think that seeing the device in person, and not having looked closely at it online, mesmerized me.

I can see having to remove that item when the kid gets to a mischievous phase... Though hopefully they'll learn that you don't need to water the tile or carpet like you do the grass outside.

Quick question regarding the Gripe water... Had you tried any other brands before the one you linked? Locally I can only (most easily) get a particular store brand and I'm wondering if they're al pretty much the same.

They're not all the same, though I can't tell you which are the more effective. Some of the recipes in Canada still contain alcohol.

This is definitely true, as I remember "ethanol" as one of the ingredients in the Life brand bottle I saw at my brother's place. I was going to make a Sunoco joke at the time but then got focused on something else.

A back-pack type of carrier. We have one with a metal frame that I love. The strap type ones often have too many straps and are a pain to use (in my experience). I put my five month old in mine the other day and did the lawn and various other yard duties while he fell asleep on my back.

I used it all the time with our first son as well. He was geocaching with me at a very young age in that. I also took the two of them for a short, slow ride around the yard on my motorcycle the other day. The five month old on my back and the three year old on the back seat holding onto the frame of the rack.

A Bumbo.
Vibrating Bouncy Chair.
Video Monitor (ours was bought a geeks.com three and a half years ago)
A dehumidifier makes for a great white noise generator.
A play mat with stuff overhead to play with (sort of like a dome tent without the roof).
If you can find a place to buy patience... buy some!

Another bit of advice is to put the child in their own room early in the game. Our first was 5 weeks old and in his own room and our second was 4 weeks old. The first started sleeping through the night at 3 months and the second at 2 months and a bit. That also means you may sleep through the night and that can help a lot with patience for the rough days that the wee ones will have.

The last bit of advice is to enjoy it all! It goes so fast. Our three year old was a baby to us... and then the new little guy came along and we realized just how grown up our three year old was. Wow! Times files!!!

I wonder if she'll find this post one day when searching Google...

Born Monday August 17th, 2009, 4:15pm at 7lbs 4oz.

Olivia Margaret Hawkins Fernandes

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congrats!

It occurs to me that that one of those is the most "indispensable baby/toddler product".

Congrats!

Congrats!!!!

Congrats Bruno on the new arrival to the family.

Probably not baby/toddler products mostly, but you might find some good deals at the new Woot! site when she's a little older.

Ah
What a cutie.
Good luck to mommy, daddy and baby.

Good luck !