New Chair!

I've been searching for a very long time for a portable chair that had a tray, but was not made of plastic, or at least was BPA-free. Being concerned about plastic and germs is apparently a difficult combination. For home use, I want a chair that is easy to clean (just a practical thing having been using one that is difficult to clean), not made of plastic (BPA-free for safety), and no tray (better developmentally for the baby to be at the table). This one fits the bill, but the price is steep, so we are holding off to save enough money for it. I also like that it grows with the child, and can eventually be a regular chair, so it seems less of a waste to spend so much money on it (versus an infant car seat that is only used for less than a year, but don't get me started on that soapbox).

Anyways, for a travel/restaurant use chair, I had different criteria, mainly, I wanted a tray because I just thought that the restaurant tables are so dirty and gross. There are plenty of chairs, of the clip on the table variety, that are not made of plastic. However, to find one that has a tray, that is an impossible task. If I had the resources, I would invent one and market it. This seemed to be a popular choice amongst a lot of parent-friends, and I almost gave in to buy it. It has the tray, but when I called Fisher-Price to get BPA info on it, I was disappointed that they just gave the usual shpiel about how BPA is safe, etc. I told them I was sorry that they were not listening to consummers concerns and that I would NOT be purchasing that product from them.

Then, I found this. It was pricey, and had no tray, but at least I could pull the chair further away from the table if I really wanted to, and just be tray-less and table-less. I liked that it was wood, and you could buy an attachment to make it a free-standing chair also. However, after thinking about it a while, I realized that G doesn't really need a free-standing little chair, if we're outdoors like at a park, she can just sit on the ground/blanket. And it was pricey.

So I kept searching, and eventually found this. The problem was that there wasn't much info online about it, reviews, specs regarding size/weight, etc. But a local baby store (not so local, 30 min away) had it in stock, so we made the trek after church to check it out. And ended up buying it and using it immediately at my family's for dinner. And I'm in love with it. Granted, it doesn't have the tray, but I'll live. It's super light, the wooden one I mentioned above is 5 lbs, this one is 3. Also, the "legs" adjust to three different chairback heights (though they do not adjust to really highback chairs like our formal dining table chairs). Because the legs adjust, you can also pull them out and pretty much store the whole thing flat at about 1-2 inches thick. I can even put it in the diaper bag (but it's easier to just hook it off the top of the bag). And the price is comparable to the hook on the table types, though slightly more than the plastic ones, but significantly less bulky.

Now if only they made a tray attachment for it...