Photography

Sometimes looking at good photographers of babies will give you ideas about how to take good infant pictures. Here are a couple of sites. The second one is the one we used in The Netherlands.

www.zing-photography.co.uk (check out the gallery)

www.leodenoudenfotograaf.nl

Here is one of our photos from that photographer.

Gifts

Animal onesies: www.littleanimals.com/shop/giftsets.html.

Bibs: www.babybazaar.com/xq/asp/dept_id.227/pf_id.0227-020/qx/product.htm

Furniture

Some furniture sites:

2modern.com (stylish)

thecompanystore.com

nestplease.com

Children's TV

Maisy at maisyfunclub.com.

Well, this is sort of children's TV. It was started by a punk rocker, pancakemountain.com, from the DC area.

Misc. Sites

This site has stickers, mrsgrossmans.com.

We bought this toy organizer, stacksandstacks.com.

Toys

Here is a good general site focusing on toys. infantino.com

I bought a push toy from this site, farmgoodsforkids.com, and it seems pretty good. It has a more elaborate set of categories when shopping for toys.

This Kido NYC site is well set up and offers good products, and Step2.com also is set up well.

This site, oliebollen.com, has a hip toy section that has some foreign brands.

Advice and Helpful Information

This site is out of the UK, but it is one of many sites that provide useful information about having and raising children.

babyworld.co.uk

This site isn't available yet in DC, but it soon will be, urbanbaby.com.

General Good Sites

These sites are generally useful, and often focus on stylish and good quality products. The downside is a lot of their products are expensive, but you can usually find reasonably priced products in some of their product sections.

babystyle.com
barebabies.com
cocoacrayon.com
pokkadots.com
kidonyc.com
totshop.com
sparkability.net
potterybarnkids.com (though I am not that big a fan of Pottery Barn)
onestepahead.com (this site seems reasonably priced)
target.com (The children's sections always seems to get better)

Neat and Recommended Products

I like these Playsam Streamliner toy cars. They also have some that you can put people in. www.playsam.com














These placemats for food, coloring, artwork etc. are really neat. The reverse side is while for using eraseable markers.

The Baby Bjorn line, babybjorn.com, has served us well. The baby carrier, toilet, sitter, and bibs have all been good. The only bad product was the diaper bag backpack.

We really like the Circle of Friends haircare line, circle-of-friends.com. You can order the salon brands from beautydeals.net.

We got this harlequin bib in France and everyone loved it. It is from Thermobaby and can be purchased fom bumpto3.com from the UK. I must admit though, that the Baby Bjorn scoop bibs are more durable.









Quarterly baby update cards that are really neat and won a graphic design award in 2005. You can purchase them at greerchicago.com.







2Modern has some good furniture. The tables and chairs selection is very good. Here is a rocker that -- though expensive -- looks really good and comfortable.







Organic baby wear with animals, littleanimals.com.







I like the wooden LikeABike products, but this new addition is also pretty cool, modernchild.net.







These leather bibs are interesting, photobugbabyboutique.com.







This isn't a product, but it is a site dedicated to people selling handmade things, etsy.com. They have a children's section and it is full of knit hats and sweaters at a reasonable price.







We had this spoon with the detachable train that makes sound. Just don't accidentally wash the train part. We bought it in The Netherlands, so I don't know if you can get in the US. It is from Dr. Miriam Stoppard's Always Learning range of products. www.babyassistant.co.uk





The baby food jars from Beaba are really excellent. www.beaba.com

They are made in France and come in small and large sizes. They are durable and withstand anything. I wish we had bought more.

Baby Clothes

Here are several sites that offer nice baby clothes. My favorite is DPAM (Du Pareil au Meme). It is located in France, but they ship to the US. Many of these are rather expensive, but they do have sales too.

Some of the sites are not actual internet retailers, but instead direct you to stores that sell their products.


littleme.com

jacadiusa.com

americanapparelstore.com (simple and cheap)

dpam.com (Du Pareil au Meme, French style at a reasonable price)

kiwiindustries.com

blablakids.com

laurenceleste.com

petitpatapon.com

choochoobaby.com

www.zutano.com

luckymeuk.com

tuttibella.com

bodenusa.com (UK)

hannaandersson.com

gymboree.com

oliebollen.com (offers French brands)

bonpoint.com (way too expensive beautiful clothes)

boutiquekids.com (European Brands)

www.gap.com

This is a general site that is referenced in another posting that has stylish clothing and products.

babystyle.com

Blogs

A daddy site. They just seem a bit more interesting than many of the mother sites, daddytypes.com. It also has a good list of other blogs and nicely organizes things into categories.

Laid-off-Dadm, laidoffdad.typepad.com, is an interesting site. It was pitted against Mother-in-Chief, which was organized by Oprah, but that 'contest' is no longer taking place.

This site, mamasbagoftricks.blogspot.com, had some funny stuff.

I suppose there are many blogs out there, but this one is just an example of the wealth of information that can be found in these forums, babyparenting.about.com.

If you like Todd Parr's colorful books (or at least if your child does) then this blog is pretty interesting. He has nice art too. web.mac.com/toddworld/iWeb/Site%203/Hi.html He also has a site for his new TV show at www.toddparr.com.

Parenting Hack is a good site, www.parenthacks.com.

Music

A good assortment of hip children's music from a company that is set up to benefit independent artists. You can listen to selections from many of the CDs. cdbaby.com

Here are a couple of children's bands that have some good albums.

thehollowtrees.com (folk)

lunchmoneymusic.com

A good site for children's music information is smallages.blogspot.com.

Stylish Products

These are just some general sites that are hipper than others.

mimmobaby.com

babygeared.com

sparkability.net

urbanbaby.com

modernseed.com

modernchild.net

Strollers

Here is a site that reviews strollers. strollers.baby-gaga.com

Despite the cost, Bugaboo offers good urban strollers, though it is probably not a good option for Americans who rely upon cars. Target offers a Bugaboo knock-off now for under $300. I must admit that I think the newer models are not as good as the Frog. The Cameleon is too big (with the bassinet) and even more expensive than the Frog, while the Gecko just seems a bit cheap and loses some functionality.

We had a Jane before, and it was good, but it broke after some hard wear. Nothing is more expensive than buying some baby products twice.

A lot of people also like Phil and Teds strllers at philandteds.com.

Another great brand is Quinny, quinny.com.

Toy Awards

Here are some award sites that list recommended toys and other good ideas.

toyportfolio.com (Oppenheimer)
nappa.parenthood.com (Parenthood.com)
parents-choice.org (Parents' Choice)

Leaning Curve has a list of toy winnners that they have available on their site. learningcurve.com/awards/awards.asp

Baby Announcements

We used this site, inababycarriage.com, for our baby announcements and they really have some nice, modern styles.

Elumdesigns.com also has some nice products. They also produce quarterly baby update cards that are really neat and won a graphic design award in 2005. You can purchase them at greerchicago.com.

I don't like all of these cards, but there are some good ones, babyshere.com.

These movie poster announcements are quirky but I bet the grandparents would like it, 5starbaby.com.













Lemon Tree Paperie at lemontreepaperie.com has some really nice and simple announcements as well as many other nice products.










Tiny Prints has some really great announcements, tinyprints.com. You can also shop for it on urbanbaby.com. Here is one example to the left.

Baby Shoes

Here are some shoe sites. We used Robeez and love them. Target has a Robeez-like line now too.

robeez.com

isabooties.com

kla-k.de (from Germany)

seekairun.com

pedoodles.com

Diaper Bags

We have the Combi Urban Sling Diaper bag and it is great. We had the Baby Bjorn backpack and it didn't last at all. There are many sites that offer the bag, just google it. Here is just one of them. www.babystyle.com The Combi site offers other products too, combi-intl.com.

Skip Hop has some nice bags, especially if you need to hang them from a stroller. skiphop.com
I really like the Pronto Mini Changer too.

OiOi has -- as they say -- sophisticated diaper bags, and it also looks like they are putting out a stroller soon with more interesting colors. oioi.com.au

The LJ Bamboo bags are pretty stylish too and are separated into men and women bags. ljbamboo.com. Some of the celebs have been seen sporting these bags.

JJ Cole has a sling style bag that is unique, jjcoleusa.com, and their baby sling looks comfy too.

Fleurville has some great bags. I have like the Black DJ bag. fleurville.com

These Loom bags are a bit expensive but stylish and functional, loomlife.com.

Outdoor Toys

Likeabike is an expensive but neat outdoor development toy. I saw one in France and thought it was about the greatest thing I had seen. likeabikeusa.com The new metal Likeabike is also rather neat, modernchild.net.

If you want a cheaper, good option to the Kettler push trikes, then Berchet, groupe-berchet.com, (from France) is an option. We love ours.