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Summer Infant Easton Tote Changing Bag
by womble1985
I used a free changing bag that I got with my travel system for a few months but once I started needing to take out small toys/rattles and spare clothes I just needed something bigger.
The Summer Infant changing bag was one of the biggest I could find. I was horrified to be honest at the price of some 'designer' changing bags. ... I found this bag for £25 online.
It has two end pockets which are a good size and you can easily fit a bottle in them. Inside is a zip pocket to one side and an elasticated open pocket the other side. At the ends inside are also two small elasticated pockets which can also be used for bottles and makes sure they stay upright.
On the outside is a pocket either side which are of a good size (I keep my babys 'red book' inside one so I always have it on me but it is away from the inside incase a bottle leaks). It has two handles which are well padded and comfortable to grip and a long adjustable strap for either shoulder carrying or can be hung over the buggy.
It came with a wipe clean changing mat and small plastic wallet with a zip. I can't remember what this is for but I have always used it for soiled clothes or nappy bags if there was no where to dispose of a nappy near.
One of the best things about this bag is that it is really easy to clean, the surface is very easily wiped clean but at the same time feels soft. It has a very dark brown and cream pattern. I deliberately looked for a bag which didn't have the flap over top as I have always found it much more convenient to just undo a zip and find what I want without having to faff around moving the flap out of the way and then undoing a zip.
I now have a toddler and a newborn and as an example I can fit in to it the following:
5 toddler nappies
5 size 3 nappies
A spare bodysuit for each child
2 spare baby sleepsuit
Spare trousers for toddler
Spare socks for both
Pack of nappy bags
Full packet of wipes
2 muslin squares
Small bottle of hand sanitiser
Bottle of juice for toddler
Tomme Tippee bottle warmer (bit like a thermos, quite bulky)
Packet of crisps
Small colouring book and crayons
Small rattle
Small pack of tissues
2 cotton bibs
Plasters
Calpol Sachets
Toddler gloves and hat
This is everything I usually have in it when I go out, so as you can see it holds alot and I am sure I have forgotten a few things. This is just using the inside space, there are the 4 outside pockets also!
I think you would be hard pushed to find a bigger changing bag with so much space for the same price. Even if I was given an expensive designer bag I would still use this as it just holds everything I need it to.
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X-Adventure Trekker
by intejoes
I had my son I was very insistent on getting a pram where he could lie flat, I strongly believed that lying in a bent position would hurt his back. I also wanted to buy just one product that could be used for a long time. Also, I did not have a huge budget. I spent a long time trying to find a car seat where the baby could lie flat or a ... carrycot that would fit in the car, but I have since come to the conclusion that this kind of thing does not exist and you have to compromise somewhere. Eventually I ended up getting a separate car seat and this X-Adventure Trekker pram/stroller combination. Another factor which nudged me towards buying it was that I found it on offer at preciouslittleone.com for £100 whereas the actual price is around £260.
To be honest, I wasn't aware of the brand until I bought this, and I still dont know much about the brand. They have a website on which they give an address in Nottinghamshire, but you cannot buy their products from their website.
Included in the package were:
Three wheeler aluminium frame
Carry cot with a mattress and mattress covering inside
Sunshade for the carrycot
Stroller seat with sunshade
A rain cover which can be used on both
Underseat bag
I bought it online and it was delivered promptly, earlier than expected. A bit of assembly is required. There were no instructions provided, so we were guided by the picture of the assembled thing on an accompanying piece of paper. It was a bit fiddly without instructions, but we managed it in the end.
I have the same colours as the image shown, black and brown-beige, there doesn't seem to be any more colour options on the website.
----Frame & wheels-------
As seen in the image, this is a three wheeler.
The frame is made of aluminium with plastic components, and feels quite strong. It can be folded down to fit into a car. The release mechanism to release the frame is on the side, it is quite simple and easy to operate. The handle is one straight bar across, with a soft black covering on the area you grip. You can hang a changing bag across the handle but it is not possible to hang loads of shopping bags on it, as I have seen people do.
The wheels are probably the best part of this stroller. They are huge compared to the ones you usually see (25 cm across) and air filled, so it is quite steady and comfortable even when going over pebbles and uneven ground. The front wheels rotate 360 degrees, so it is very easy to steer it around small spaces.
The brake is a bar which you can press downwards with your foot to lock the two back wheels, and it works very well. To release the brake, you simply lift it up with your foot, although you might have to move the stroller a bit to tease it out of the lock. I have only filled in air the very first time we set it up, and I use it at least once on most days.
------- underseat basket-----------
The underseat basket is made of a net like material and straps on to the frame via canvas tags that you attach around the frame and snap into place with a press button. It has a fairly large capacity, and can easily hold the contents of two or three standard size changing bags. It is not in an excellent position for easy use as there are two bars right in front of the bag. Smaller items can be put in and taken out over the top of the bag, but for larger items you would need to unclip one of the straps attaching it to the frame, which i find a bit fiddly and inconvenient.
------carry cot----------
The carrycot is rear-facing, it has to be placed in the rear-facing position to be secured on to the frame. The obvious advantage is that you can see your baby as you go along. It is made of plastic and feels strong and sturdy, with cloth covering on the outside. It is fairly heavy, but is not difficult to attach or detach. You place it onto the frame and there are two slots at the front and back where the carry cot attaches to the frame. You can hear a click sound when they lock in place. The mechanism at the front then has to be pressed firmly to release the cot, so it is very secure.
It is quite long and roomy and my son has been quite comfortable in it, even though he is a big baby. It comes with a removable and washable mattress and mattress cover. The sun shade is to be attached to the head end by means of press buttons, and it can be retracted or put up at various levels. There are two buttons on each side to attach the shade and one at the back. The rain cover is also to be attached here to the same buttons, so I usually attach the shade to one and the rain cover to the other one.
The carry cot has little legs beneath it, so it would be alright to set it down on the ground if you wanted to.
------------Stroller seat---------
The stroller seat seems to covered in the same material as the carry cot. It is to be attached to the frame with a series of straps and belts and secured with large press buttons, which is quite bothersome. I dont feel this is very safe as the seat seems just suspended from the frame, without any actual proper physical connection. The seat is not at all comfortable, there is no padding whatsoever on the seat or the backrest. In fact the backrest is quite hard. There is a five point harness system made of canvas belts just about an inch in breadth. This is again quite fiddly to secure and feels very flimsy as everything is just held together by a plastic hook. it seems quite small and uncomfortable when my son sits in it, and i am seriously considering getting another stroller. There is no restraining bar at the front of the stroller for the baby to hold on to.The sun shade for the stroller has a clear plastic window through which you can sneak a peak at the baby.
The rain cover provided can be used on both the carry cot and the stroller. It is not a big one and only covers the exposed area from the edge of the sun shade to the leg area. Also there is no footmuff provided.
The frame is quite large when assembled and I tend to leave it at the entrance to my flat, where there is a bit of space that is only for getting in and out of the house. We have a Ford Focus and I can only fit either the carry cot or the frame in the boot, but it did fit quite comfortably into the boot of a taxi ( it was a large saloon type car with a large boot).
-----My verdict------
Size: Rather large
Design: There is a lot more room for improvement.
Ease of use: satisfactory
Materials: good
Price: As I got it for £100, I cant complain but I definitely wouldn't be happy to pay the retail price for this item.
Overall, it works well with the carry cot but I am seriously considering getting a new stroller. in hindsight, I feel it might have been better to get a carseat/stroller combination.
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Winnie the Pooh Adventure Stroller
by chrisandmark
When Hollie (then twenty one months old) needed a new buggy I decided I didn't want to spend too much as she was by that point a competent walker and the only thing I could envisage using a pushchair for was to walk her older sister to school as the distance was just slightly too much for her little legs to handle. At her age I didn't ... need all the bells and whistles so looked around for a basic stroller, eventually finding this Winnie the Pooh Adventure Stroller priced at a shade under £13 in a local discount store.
It's very, very basic. At this point can I just point out that our stroller is different in design to the one pictured above, being completely orange in colour with a simple illustration of Pooh Bear printed on the back of the seat. I suspect the stroller in the piccie is a dolls pram due to the stumpy shaping, but could be wrong - mine, however, is an actual pushchair for babies! It's probably not much bigger than a dolls pram actually, Mark (at almost six feet) can't push this one as the non-adjustable handles are far too short for him - in fact at my modest 5' 1" (and an all-important 'bit') they're slightly too short for me too and I'd prefer the height of the handles to have an extra couple of inches.
The frame is a plain aluminium colour and very 'square', it's reasonably rigid once the pushchair is fully opened but there's always an element of 'sway' to it which makes it feel extremely cheap when I compare it to other pushchairs/strollers in my collection. The five-point harness could be better in my opinion as when I strap David in (yes, Hollie outgrew it remarkably quickly so I kept it for her little brother) the adjuster clips slide down the slippery straps by themselves so that at the end of a ten minute walk he's practically free as they become so loose. Not great for my little Houdini and I find myself checking the straps every couple of minutes or so to ensure they haven't worked themselves so loose that he's in danger of throwing himself out onto the footpath! This has never happened, but it's been a close thing! Talking of the harness, the actual clip which fastens it is a living nightmare - it's incredibly stiff and the part that clips inside feels like it's ever so slightly too big for the casing, my mum has arthritis and can't use this pushchair for the simple reason that once she's strapped David into his seat she can't get him out again! The day she had to wheel David round to a neighbour and ask him to undo the clip was the day she said she never wanted to borrow this pushchair again...
It's nice to push once you get used to the fact that this isn't the most stable pushchair ever invented. I've used it irregularly for David since he was around thirteen months old and I've definitely noticed that as he's gotten heavier the pushchair is nicer to push - he weighs it down nicely, although being quite a hefty little boy is quickly outgrowing it despite only having his second birthday last month. I suspect I'll get another couple of months out of it, leaving me in the same position as Hollie and requiring another basic stroller just for the walk to school which is too far for David's little legs! I'm particularly impressed with the brake and foot-bar (for folding) as they've been placed well out of the way of my feet, considering how small this pushchair is I was expecting these to be a trippy nuisance but they're actually in a much better location than those on the much more expensive pushchairs I've owned in the past.
I've just been over the label and there's no mention of recommended ages/weights for this pushchair so I have to give you my thoughts on it. There's absolutely zero support to this seat of this pushchair, padding is non-existent and there's no frame of any description built around the seat - when David is sitting in the chair you can poke the lump underneath and it's his bottom! As an adult it looks like possibly the most uncomfortable seat ever, but Hollie or David have never complained (and Hollie has always been a particularly vocal child when in an seat which doesn't meet her comfort requirements) and looking at it now I suspect it has something of a hammock effect and is probably more supportive than it appears. Having said that, no way is this pushchair suitable for small babies - the complete lack of support means kiddies need to be able to hold themselves in a seated position for however long they're in the pushchair for, I'd probably recommend not even thinking about using this pushchair until your little one is at least nine or ten months old and only then for short journeys IF they are reasonably good at holding their own back straight by themselves. At eleven months David was fine as he's always been chunky for his age, but I hated him to fall asleep in this pushchair as it made him look so slumped and uncomfortable - now he's so much older he doesn't sleep in any of his buggies but if we were going on a longer walk I wouldn't choose to use this one just in case he dozed off.
Folding the pushchair is relatively easy, you need two hands to do it thanks to the fact that it's an umbrella folding system so you have to push the two handles together. The foot-bar is highly irritating as you need to push a small lever backwards with the top of your foot, not a problem most of the time but in the summer when I was wearing flimsy dolly shoes I was finding small bruises on my feet from folding this pushchair! Opening it for use is much easier and this CAN be done with one hand, you just have to grab one of the handles and let it fall into the open position really - one thing that's lacking on this pushchair is a clip to hold it closed, this is a pain sometimes as although it holds itself together pretty well it'll start opening out if knocked at an angle. Also, the brake doesn't hold once the pushchair is folded and in the upright position so you have to place it very carefully for storage - personally I find it easier to lie the buggy down when it's folded up as I just know one of the smaller kids in the house will end up pulling it onto themselves if I prop it up, and although it's extremely lightweight (my disabled mum can lift it into the car boot with one hand) it would still hurt if it dropped on you!
The brakes incidentally are excellent, despite the cheapness (both in price and unfortunately appearance) of the pushchair I have complete confidence in this respect and don't worry that David is going to go sailing down the road when the brake is applied. Obviously I'd never loose go of the handles if we were on a hill, in fact I rarely let go of my pushchair handles at all, but on the flat the brakes are strong and secure.
I've never, ever, ever found a raincover to fit this miniature pushchair so it's very much a fair weather item. I've tried several out but they just slip down the frame and irritate the life out of David, the closest one I got to 'fit' (using the word in the loosest possible sense) was made by Safery 1st and cost around £3, this held reasonably well but was rather tight at the bottom so caught on David's long legs and caused him to keep kicking at it until the velcro failed - very annoying, but I can't say I blame him for not liking it! Likewise other accessories do not fit on this pushchair at all, including the uber-irritating fact of my long handled changing bag not fitting across the handles without dropping down and dragging along the floor - this really is the most basic pushchair in existence I think!
I can't complain though. Three years of on-and-off use for £13 is brilliant in my opinion, and surprisingly it's still in good enough condition to add to my pile of 'baby things to pass on' once my cousin comes out of the danger zone in her recently announced pregnancy. The only thing which spoils the look of the pushchair is the fact that the wheels have pretty much lost all their colour now, they haven't worn as such but do make the pushchair look tatty and poorly maintained - which is unfair as I'm a total pushchair fanatic and take pride in keeping them looking as good as possible for as long as possible!
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