Highchairs: Stokke vs Bloom

Aiven's first high chair was a Bloom Nano Highchair.  I have to be honest, I didn't choose this chair--it chose me.  I won it at a new moms event I attended.  I was so excited--I won something practical and expensive!  Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations.

This highchair may be a bestseller, but it wasn't the right chair for us.  It is designed to be sleek, foldable, and very sturdy.  You would think those features would be fantastic but they actually created problems.  First, the sleekness: it is covered in a plastic sleeve that looks easy to wipe down, but it is not compatible with wet wipes.  You have to clean it with soap and water, which is quite a nuisance.  It also has lots of cracks and crevices where food can get stuck and decompose.  My baby's thighs have more than enough of those, thank you very much.  Next: the foldability.  We never did fold the thing.  Where were we supposed to store it?  And then to put it back together every time we wanted to feed our son?  Oh, and I am supposed to do all this one handed?  And lastly: the sturdiness.  This sturdiness is bought by having extremely wide legs.  So an earthquake can't topple this thing, but it takes up half the floor space in the kitchen and it's impossible to avoid stubbing your toes on it!

We don't want to take any furniture to Austin that we don't love so I started to do some research and consult with friends about high chairs.  I had heard of the Stokke Tripp Trapp before and knew it was highly rated for safety.  It was everything the Bloom Nano wasn't: wooden, compact, and flimsy-looking (but don't be fooled by appearances -- it is very stable).  I justified the high price tag to my husband by showing him the pictures illustrating that the chair reconfigures to adapt to a growing child.  "It will go from the kitchen to his dorm room someday!" I implored.

So off to Albee Baby I went (props to the gentleman who helped me) along with my husband's credit card (props to my hubby for the gift that keeps on giving).  I returned home with a walnut Tripp Trapp in a box and mentally prepared myself for the challenge of putting it together.

There were two things that surprised me right away.  Only eight screws!  After so many years of piecing together Ikea furniture jigsaw puzzles, eight screws seemed like a gift from heaven.  Not only that, the instructions were intelligible! There were actual phrases and they weren't Chinese transliterations!  I had the chair set up in 10 minutes.

I did not buy the baby set which is a cushioned seat and back rest for babies.  But I might (or rather, my husband's credit card might).  I am going to try living without it.  Also, I was not initially thrilled with the five-point harness.  I wanted to make it tight to hold in my precious Aiven, but the straps aren't soft and dig into his neck.  I decided to call Stokke about it.  I expected an annoying robotic menu to greet me, but lo and behold, a human answered!  It was a friendly guy who offered me a couple of solutions and told me to send a picture to assist them in troubleshooting if his suggestions didn't work. I came up with my own solution, though, which was to loosen the straps and Velcro little fuzzy padding around them to protect his tender skin.

It hasn't been long, but Aiven, dad, and I have fallen in love with the new chair!  He can sit right at the table with us and he seems very comfortable.  It is also a breeze to clean.  It is wood, so we just wet wipe it down.  Now, whether it lasts until Aiven moves out of the house has yet to be determined...