The mamaRoo

True story: when I was a kid, I used to claim to be from the planet "Egg-a-tron." I can only assume my imagination had been inspired by one of my favorite shows at the time, Mork & Mindy, in which Robin Williams played an alien who came to Earth in an egg-like spacecraft. Yeah, I was weird. Still am.

ANYWAY, at my baby shower I overheard a few friends talking about this "futuristic egg-looking seat" that was new on the scene, and so of course my curiosity was piqued. But then I forgot about it...

...Until that very same egg-like contraption was gifted to us by a generous couple whose kids couldn't get enough of it when they were babies. And that's when I found out that this thing is called a mamaRoo. (And seriously, what IS IT with all the weird capitalization and spelling of baby products? It's driving me insane.)

Its point is to simulate the motions YOU make when you carry your kid... or that a car ride would make, and so on. I forgot which setting I had it on in the video below (there are 5 settings: car ride, tree swing, ocean wave, rock a bye and kangaroo), but you'll get the point—and quite frankly, I never really thought Baba preferred one setting to another, anyway.

As you can see, Baba enjoyed the mamaRoo a lot as the months passed.

Our dog's thinking: Humans are nuts. What is this thing?

Why I do think I'll take a nap, thank you very much.

Then the day came when he figured out how to pull down the arm that holds the removable egg toys. I think he was around five months at this point.

I don't really care about these eggs...

... I just wanna pull the arm off. Ta-da!

So, um, yeah. After BG figured out he could pull the arm thingy off, he pulled it off every single time we sat him in the mamaRoo going forward. I did a quick search before writing this post to see if this happened to anyone else or if maybe we just didn't put it together correctly, but I did in fact find other references to this issue.

It's not a problem if you're watching your kid and are close by to take it away so he doesn't jam the connecting end (opposite the toys) in his mouth or eye or something. But otherwise you should just leave it off after he is strong enough to mess with it.

Rest assured he'll find other things to put in his mouth at that point...

Shoes for lunch!

The bottom line: We were really happy our friends got us the mamaRoo, especially since it runs about $200. I liked to use the built-in sounds (white noise, waves, nature, etc.), but also plugged my iPod into it several times as well (there's a docking station of sorts built into the base). You'll need to be near an electrical outlet for it to work, but rest assured that it does stop moving at the SLIGHTEST hint of something blocking its way.

We got about 6.5 months of use out of the mamaRoo before having to move it into storage. While it can hold an infant up to 25 pounds, once your kid starts being able to sit up on his own, it's unlikely he'll want to stay in ANY sort of reclining seat (including a bouncer).

This definitely isn't a must-have product. Smaller, less expensive bouncers and swings and pack 'n plays achieve the same purpose: giving your little one a place to chill for a bit while you take a break. But I did like the zen-ness of its movements, and I think Baba did, too.