Baby Registry Guide for the Smart New Mom – Part 5

Clothes

Onesies
- The Minimalist Mom: onesie short-sleeve shirts, onesie long-sleeve shirts
  - For the first few weeks, all baby needs in the way of clothing are onesies. However, make sure you have a bunch of these unless you want to be doing laundry all the time.
  - Assuming your baby will be normal birth weight, you won’t need the newborn onesies for too long. Both of my babies grew out of the newborn size by two weeks of age.
  - Also, if your baby will be born in cold weather or you just like to keep your home cold, get long-sleeved onesies. On the contrary, if your baby will be born during hot weather, get short sleeved ones.
  - The onesie shirts are super convenient because it eliminates the need to undress baby for the 10,000 diaper changes you’ll be doing each day. Yes, baby’s legs will be uncovered, but you’ll likely have them in at least a swaddle when they’re sleeping anyway. Plus, babies won’t grow out of these as fast.
- The Frugal Mom: regular short-sleeve onesies, regular long-sleeve onesies
  - These are simple and super cheap.
- The Convenience Mom: magnetic footies (girls), magnetic footies (boys),
  - Whoa! Why were the magnetic footies not available when I had my babies?? These onesies are amazing. It combines the benefits of the button up onesie with the zip up onesie. Button up onesies are nice because you don’t have to undo the top of the onesie to change baby’s diaper. This keeps baby warmer. The zip up onesies are so much quicker to put on, so it makes the middle of the night diaper changes so much easier.
  - The magnetic onesies definitely cost more, but even the most frugal mom may be tempted to get these when sleep becomes your most precious commodity.
Mittens
- All Moms: baby mittens
  - Mittens will keep your baby from scratching up her adorable little face. Get a bunch of these because some of them are too loose and will fall off all of the time. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a bloody scratch on your baby’s face and then realizing the mitten had fallen off.
  - You could try these fancy mittens with adjustable velcro at the wrists. They have 4.5 star reviews on average on Amazon but some people did say that after a few washes, the velcro curled up and that caused scratches too.
  - You could also use baby socks as mittens.
Socks
- All Moms: baby socks
  - Think about getting just a few pairs of socks for baby. Don’t be like me and get enough for a daily sock change every day for two weeks. Babies don’t walk and hardly ever need shoes at the beginning, so their feet stay pretty clean!
Hats
- All Moms: baby hats
  - Babies can lose a lot of heat through their head, so it’s important to keep a hat on, especially during the winter.
  - The hospital will give you at least a couple hats to start off with. If you need more, or just want cuter ones, look on Amazon or find a crocheted/knitted hat on Etsy or Craftsy.

Toys

Here are some of my babies’ favorite toys during their first year:

Babyproofing

Cabinets
- The Minimalist Mom: baby’s link toys
  - Because versatility is pretty much your middle name, you can use baby’s links to hold cabinet doors together when you get around to babyproofing. They will work for knobs or pulls because you can adjust the size by adding or subtracting links.
- The Frugal Mom: rubber bands
  - If you have knobs on your cabinets, you could just put rubberbands around them to keep baby from getting inside. I would say this babyproofing technique will probably last you until baby gets to about 18 months or so.
- The Convenience Mom:
  - The Munchkin latches are probably the easiest to use and install, and they work great. You can use them on cabinets, drawers, doors, and even toilets.
Sharp Edges
- Unfortunately, I still have not found any options for babyproofing sharp edges that don’t fall off and aren’t hideous-looking. We had to use E600 glue to permanently attach bumpers to our TV stand, fireplace, coffee tables, etc.
  - Furniture bumper
  - Corner Guards
Gates
- We live in a modest two story home, but for some reason, we have two staircases. That means, we had to get four baby gates (two for upstairs, two for downstairs). Some of our banisters are also either not perfectly aligned or had no sturdy attachment site. I pretty much researched this to death, and this is what we ended up buying:
  - Supergate
    - This is the sturdiest babyproofing gate we have. We screwed both sides into studs, and we have never had a problem with it. The downside is that the walls where the gate will be attached have to be parallel to each other. It won’t attach at an angle. In addition, where the gate opens is narrower than the total width of the gate. Hopefully, you won’t be moving wide loads through it too frequently.
    - Here is the link to the extension piece.
  - KidCo Top of Stairs Gate
    - This gate goes on the top of your staircase because it has pegs that prevent the gate from opening towards your stairs. I really like this gate because it is easy to use and does not take a lot of strength to open. The downside here is that Jo Jr. could open this gate at about 3.5 years old. There were a couple times when he left the gate open and Missy Jo could have gotten to the staircase.
    - If you don’t want to put holes in your banister, get the mounting kit like I did. Also, if you have a wider staircase, you may need the extension.
  - KidCo Angle Mount Gate
    - For both of our bottom gates, we needed the angle mount gate because the two attachment sites of the gates were not parallel to each other. For the staircase at the front of the house, the bottom of the banister curves outwards. Since there are no walls there, there was no decent place to attach the gate. We had to use the mounting kit on both sides, in addition to the angle mount gate.
Plugs
- The Minimalist Mom: outlet plugs
  - cheap and easy babyproofing method
- The Frugal Mom: outlet plugs
- The Convenience Mom: sliding outlet covers
  - I’m kind of embarrassed to say this, but we have a group of cleaning ladies that come clean our house every week. Honestly though, it’s the best money I’ve ever spent. Anyway, they always take my outlet plugs out and forget to put them back in. The easy but more expensive solution to babyproofing is these sliding outlet covers.
  - The ones I listed above work well, but the size is just a little smaller than a normal outlet cover. So, if the hole in your drywall is bigger, the outlet cover will be too small. In that case, I would get these bigger outlet covers. The bigger outlet covers fit nicely, but sometimes the sliding piece does not slide back over the outlet, kind of defeating the purpose.
  - Remember that both of these outlet covers go directly over your plug. You just have to take the original plate off and screw in the new one. You don’t need to do any electrical work.