this post is inspired by a post over at no one thing. so i am just going to take her list and revise it a bit for my own experience. listen up.

• didymos wrap. if you’ve been reading my blog for the past nine weeks then you understand why this thing is amazing. and by this thing i mean any woven wrap that is meant to hold your baby close to you without dangling it by the crotch (like some other unmentionable carriers that seem to think it’s ok to dangle little baby bjorn by his goodies [and eight other reasons forward-facing carriers might not be the best bet]). ramona loves this being wrapped up and worn and it’s often the best way to get her to fall asleep (though the swing works in the morning and the boob works in the evening). wrapping her on my back allows me to keep her close to me even while i’m running around the house doing laundry or tending to the chickens or holding another fussy baby or trying to wash some dishes. babywearing is key. at least in this mother/daughter relationship.
• rump-a-rooz cloth diapers. granted, cloth diapering is SO much easier if you A) stay at home an B) own a washer and dryer. lucky for us we are both. we knew, off the bat, that we would be cloth diapering little ramona. it’s both economical and more environmentally-friendly. we at first considered pre-folds with diaper covers but then my friend aubrey showed us the magic of one-size-fits-all pocket diapers. this means ramona will wear the same diapers until she’s potty-trained. hooray! thus far, they’re working out just fine. she leaks sometimes but nothing horrendous and, a blow out is a blow out. i’ve seen a blow-out on a disposable diapered boy. if poop is going to come out it’s going to come out. pee is a different story and i would say that cloth diapers tend to leak a little more in that department. learn the art of double-stuffing or stuffing with hemp liners. (p.s. this is how i met robin from no one thing. she sold me some bum geniuses off craigslist).
• video monitor. we use this one by summer. at first i thought video monitors were only for the overbearing parents, but now i see that they are so great bc they allow–when your child is crying–to see just what sort of crying it is. do they need you to come get them NOW or are they just whimpering in their sleep? not being able to see ramona (we didn’t have one of these right away) if she was crying in the bedroom, i often made things worse by going in there when all she needed was two to five minutes to work herself out (no, i am not advocating crying it out. at least not for the very wee ones!).
• aden + anais blankets. beautiful, soft, versatile. pray that those who give you blankets (and there will be many) choose to give you these.
• pre-fold diapers we thought we might go this route for diapers for ramona. instead, we use the ones we got as spit-up rags, changing pads, burp cloths, and all-around-catch-the-nasty-stuff-coming-from-your-baby towels. there are at least two–clean and ready–in each room of our house.
• sic my brest friend. jp and i still can’t get over the stupidity of the name. and it’s not even the play-on words that bother us: why the company didn’t name it my BREAST friend (which would have made it an actual pun) is beyond us. that nuance aside, this thing really was a lifesaver when i was first learning to breast feed and ramona was latching on to my boobs every two hours (which really ends up being every hour and a half) for the first two weeks. it continued being useful when she was taking 20 minutes to half an hour during her nursing sessions. the my bre[a]st friend allowed me to lay her across it and still comfortably maneuver her mouth to where it had to go on my chest without me having to hold her up all the time. now that ramona can basically seat herself upon my lap i’ve passed it on to another friend that recently had a little one. but i’ll want it back for when our second one comes along (don’t worry, that’s not for a little bit).
• american apparel sleep sacks. just really wonderful: fit nice and easy to change diapers in the middle of the night if need be.
• co-sleeping pillow. i can’t find a link for it now (and i assure you it’s not those scary contraptions at babies’r’us) but a co-sleeping pillow/snuggler/thing was a lifesaver when we thought we were going to roll over and suffocate our newborn bean. of course, we didn’t. and we still probably wouldn’t have without this pillow. but it sure eased our fears. ramona fit perfectly inside of it and we were able to snuggle against it and have her right in between us. now she still sleeps in between us, just without this pillow as she’s outgrown it.
• oxo candela glow lights. these have been perfect for middle-of-the-night happenings. they’re just bright enough so i can see what i am doing (changing a dirty diaper or guiding my boob into her mouth) but dim enough that they don’t bother jp or wake up ramona too much. for the first couple of weeks i needed a light on so that i could always see her sleeping. my bedside light was way too bright that it was interrupting my sleep. i was so thankful when i discovered these and they arrived in the mail.

what products made your life better with a new little one? or what products do you have questions about?