Review: Funky Giraffe Bibs

I’m not one to boast but my baby boy can dribble for England. Nay, let’s go bigger – if there were a dribble Olympics he’d be banned from taking part to give others a chance. Now he’s nearly 5 months’ old we’re expecting the onset of teething and the additional dribbling (could there possibly be MORE?) that this will bring. Aside from building an ark, I’ve therefore been looking for ways to avoid the endless soaked bibs, changes of clothes and dribble filled neck creases.

I’ve seen the bandana style ‘dribble’ bibs around but have never bought them because (a) they can be expensive for something that will get covered in sick and dribble, and (b) I thought they were just for making your kid look cool (like a dog in a neckerchief). When Funky Giraffe Bibs put out a call for reviewers I jumped at the chance to try a product I admit I felt sceptical about.

Three bibs arrived (see photo) and on first feel I wondered how they could possibly be any more absorbent than an ‘ordinary’ bib. The bibs have soft cotton fronts (super colours and designs – see the website for the vast choice available) with fleecy backs – hardly the industrial strength sail material I’d been expecting! Surely these couldn’t work?

Well, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, so I wasted no time in attaching one round the many chins of my boy. I was pleased to find that they fasten with poppers (and helpfully two sets so that the neck can be expanded as your baby grows) – what possesses anyone to use Velcro on baby products I don’t know; there are few things less noisy when trying not to wake a sleeping baby!

It wasn’t long before the cotton top layer was soaked through with dribble, but to my surprise the fleecy back on the bib stopped any soaking through onto my son’s clothes. Even though the top layer was saturated I felt comfortable leaving him in the bib as I knew the poor lad wasn’t getting a cold, damp chest. Having put the bib on first thing in the morning, it wasn’t until lunchtime that I felt it was necessary to change it. Switching from five or six normal bibs a day to two of these was a revelation! And as a green and ethical company I’m sure Funky Giraffe Bibs would approve of the need to put the washing machine on less often. (Talking of which, the bibs wash up well so are likely to last and retain their good looks.)

So, any criticisms of these little wonders? They could be slightly larger, although I believe that Funky Giraffe do stock a larger version.  However, there are bonuses in keeping the bib small – I actually get to see what my boy’s wearing! Also, even though the bib is shaped to fit neatly under the chin, some damp does still get through to the neckline – I don’t know if any bib could truly stop this though. And we know that babies’ neck creases are meant to be damp or how else would they retain so much household dust, fluff and hair?

I can’t get it out of my head that these bibs are too nice to wear around the house and get grubby! (I probably just need to buy more and at £8.50 for four that’s not something I’d baulk at.) I’ll probably still use large, cheap plastic backed bibs (eugh, sweaty not funky!) when we’re slobbing around at home, but when we go out or have visitors, well, we now pop on a Funky Giraffe bib. Perhaps there is something in me just wanting my boy to look the coolest dribbler on the baby block.

He’s a happy and dribbly chap!

Thank you to the lovely people at Funky Giraffe Bibs who sent these bibs free of charge and expected nothing in return other than an objective review. This is what I’ve endeavoured to do and I hope mamas and papas of dribblers and droolers find it useful.

What? Wednesday

A brilliant idea for a new meme from Mammasaurus! Think of it like urban blogging, blog warfare, blog graffiti (although please note no public property is harmed in the making of this meme). Basically, leave your blog address and a cheeky message somewhere public and see what happens. Here’s where I left mine. (Note the clever play on words! So proud of myself ….) No extraordinary blog activity yet but I suspect the post-it has been washed away by the rain. Maybe it’ll appear out of a drain somewhere on the other side of the world (or maybe Margate).

10 things you don’t know about me

Many thanks to mammasaurus for tagging me in this exercise of pure self-indulgence combined with just a wee bit of soul-searching. I’m not sure that these ten things will make you believe I am actually a sensible and very well-rounded individual. Please do comment if you’ve not backed away by point number 10 …

1. Both my second toes are longer than my big toes. Apparently it’s a sign of genius.
2. I once appeared on Songs of Praise. There was a long close-up of me singing (well, miming) like an adorable angel (with a bowl haircut). My mum had made me stand on the pew so that I’d get picked up by the cameras. My family only went to church that day to get on the telly.
3. I had poems published in several anthologies when I was a teenager. It cost me the price of the book each time – I now know that this was vanity publishing and therefore no reflection on my literary ability. Dammit.
4. I’ve fired an M60 general purpose machine gun. By the time I realised I’d pulled the trigger the round was empty and I’d not even aimed at the target. Thank god I was aiming roughly in the right direction and not waving it around like a tool (me and the gun).
5. I am a living, breathing A-Z of the best loo stops in London. (Two kids and bladder the size of a pea.) I even know how to get through the barriers at the toilets in Liverpool Street station without paying 30p.
6.  My all-time favourite musical is Cabaret. Love it, love it, love it. I’ve seen it on stage at least five times. My favourite EmCee was James Dreyfuss and my favourite Sally was Kim Medcalfe.  Julian Clary (as EmCee) just couldn’t handle the Money Song.
7. As a child, I once took a shoebox door-to-door round my street collecting for the RSPCA with the intention of keeping the money. I collected 10p. Sadly, a neighbour phoned my parents. Even more sad is that I’d not got the letters RSPCA the right way round on the shoebox.
8. I would like my daughter to grow up to be a star of the musical stage – see point above. Unfortunately her father wants her to be a nuclear physicist so we’re looking for something halfway between the two. Square by day, star by night?
9. I always wanted to have a BMX. I would pretend that my fold up girl’s bike was a BMX and really believed that no one else would think it wasn’t. In my head I would sing the theme tune from a TV programme on at that time: “BMX boys have a lot of fun, BMX boys have a lot of fun …” (despite being a girl).
10. I once caused my husband to crash into the car in front of us by engaging in a spot of spontaneous preening. I chose an inappropriate moment on a roundabout to pluck a hair that grows out of his forehead. Oops. Would do it all again though. What kind of freak has a forehead hair?!

So like all good diseases I’m now going to pass this on to the following lucky (and very lovely) recipients to share their own ’10 things’:

verybusymama

Mama Loves London

I Missed the Memo

My Growing Obsession

LolliBop LOL

It’s not often that I win anything so I was cockahoop when I found out I’d won VIP tickets to this weekend’s LolliBop festival courtesy of BritMums and Britvic Fruit Shoot. (Part of the surprise came from the fact I couldn’t remember having entered the competition – poor sleep deprived brain o’mine.) What had promised to be an ordinary Saturday was transformed into a magical day in Regent’s Park along with hundreds of screaming, tantruming parents and their children.

I made the mistake of telling my soon-to-be-three-year-old about the trip a couple of days in advance. The lead up was thus peppered with “Is it the weekend now?” and the subsequent footstamping when she was told that Rastamouse was still two days away, then one day away, then one car journey away. Note that Rastamouse gets an early mention. Well that grooving, lilting bundle of felt was the absolute highlight of my day. The excitement in the crowd crackled like a huge Camberwell Carrot (yes, we all know the interpretation of ‘cheese’ us adults have foisted on poor Rastamouse and his Easy Crew) whilst we waited for them to appear on the main stage. For twenty minutes I forgot I was watching a jobbing actor dressed as a huge Rastafarian mouse – it was like a real gig! Proper crucial, as Rastamouse would say. Despite bursting into tears and claiming it was “too noisy” my toddler was also captivated. I think both of us were less impressed with the Zingzillas who preceded Rastamouse in the line-up. Personally, I find them mighty creepy and they just don’t have Rastamouse’s ‘riddim’.

So, Rastamouse was my high point of the day. What was my low point? The army of tremendously yummy mummies who had clearly made a lot of effort to stand in a field for a day. Call it my own insecurities and/or low self-esteem but I felt distinctively frumpy. Determined to compete with the best of them, I kept my bug-eye Gucci sunglasses on despite the cloud and rain not just because it seemed the done thing but also because I hoped it would draw attention away from my tatty jeans and post-pregnancy muffin-top. There was a little too much ‘checking each other out’ for my liking. The tension was particularly felt around the sandpit as mamas and papas hovered at the edge checking that Tarquin wasn’t going to get whacked over the head by Jonny and his bucket, or have sand emptied into their Boden hoodies (not that my daughter would do that to another child … ahem). Any conflict amongst the tiddlers was just waiting to be taken to another level by the adults – Phil & Teds at dawn.

LolliBop (“The Big Bash for Little People”) is a great concept but it was let down by the vast queues that accompanied most of the activities on offer. This isn’t surprising given that once in most of the activities were free (I’ve never seen such a queue for facepainting and wondered whether some subliminal message in the Zingzillas set had turned ordinary families into facepainting junkies). Despite the queues and general tension from being crammed in a field wheel to wheel with a zillion other buggies (the concentration required to avoid toes and children was quite headache inducing), we had a super day at Lollibop. In a week where we’ve seen a furore about ‘shocking’ images of a 10-year-old modelling in Vogue, it was great to see kids just having fun doing kids’ stuff.