The Mini Social - Online Sample Sale for Babies and Kids

I love Gilt Group and Hautelook, online sample sale sites where you can get designer goods on the cheap. I was excited to discover that a similar site existed for designer baby and kids clothes and toys.

I have been receiving daily sale emails from The Mini Social for almost six months now and it is the one email from a company that I open every day. Once I see the designer/brand on sale for that day I almost always click through to look through the collection and see what items my daughter just has to have. ;)

Now if you are anything like me, you cannot stomach paying $75 dollars for a t-shirt for a baby. But mark that well designed t-shirt down to $20 and I won't hesitate to snap it up. I have purchased brands like Dwell Baby, Tea Collection, and HaPe toys for well below retail prices. The shipping does take at least a week and a half so don't buy something you need immediately, but I have been very pleased with every item I purchased.

YoMommy Yogurt

I love Stonyfield Farm organic yogurt so I was excited to learn that they had developed a line of yogurt tailored toward pregnant and nursing moms. Introduced in January, YoMommy has added folic acid, DHA and vitamin D. A line-up of essential nutrients for growing babies.

As a member of Bzzz Agent, I received a coupon for a free sample of YoMommy. It took a few weeks for it to be available in a store near me, but now that it is I buy it every week. It comes in single-serving 4-packs with flavors like blueberry, raspberry, peach and strawberry. As a nursing mom I was eating yogurt anyway for the calcium but now I am glad to have an option with added nutrients that are beneficial for my growing daughter.

Designer Dribbles

My daughter spits up a ton. You risk ruining your outfit if you pick her up without a burp cloth on your shoulder. My mom saved many of my old cloth diapers and we use those when we are hanging around the house. It sounds gross but they have been laundered, many, many times and they are more absorbent than any fancy burp clothes you can buy. But having a plain, old white rag on my shoulder got tiring so I ordered a few cloths from Designer Dribbles after a friend's recommendation.

Designer Dribbles embroiders modern cloth diapers with monograms or fun images with your child's name, like the one on the left. For $9 you customize them with a name and the thread color of your choice. For $6 more you can add a chenille backing. I ordered 3 and I get so many comments on them. They are also my go-to gift when friends have new babies.

Playskool Made for Me MP3 Player

A couple of weeks ago my daughter decided that she needed to be held all of the time. The minute I would try to put her down, whether she was awake or sound asleep, she would wake up and start screaming. This made it impossible for me to get even the most basic tasks done, like eating or peeing. I was so desperate one day to accomplish something that I just put her down and began vacuuming. She immediately calmed down and after 10 minutes went to sleep. The next day I tried the same trick except this time I didn't need to clean my house so I just let the vacuum run while I went through my to do list.

Not wanting to destroy my vacuum or waste electricity I searched for a white noise machine on the internet. That is when I discovered the Playskool Made for Me MP3 Player. It is a portable MP3 player for ages 0+ that can be loaded with your own music or sounds. I ordered one from Toys R' Us and we use it every time we put our daughter down to sleep. The pre-loaded music is OK but the key for us was downloading a 30 minute loop of a rainstorm that makes our daughter fall asleep and stay asleep longer.

Baby Gear Pros: Easy to use, lightweight and portable, great volume control, has settings that allow the music to play for 15 or 30 minutes and then the device will turn off.

Baby Gear Cons: Disappointing that the device is not rechargeable. It requires 4 AAA batteries that only last about 2 hours. We bought rechargeable batteries but it is still a hassle to unscrew the battery compartment and charge the batteries every day.

The device has colored lights that blink when music is playing. You cannot shut off the lights and this can be distracting for a baby trying to fall asleep. We have to cover ours with a cloth.

Playlist software only compatible with PCs.

Update: Our player broke recently. The MP3 unit seems to be the culprit as whenever we put it into the player it stops working but it will cycle through the prerecorded tunes without the unit attached. I reached out to Hasbro and discovered that they are no longer making this product. My guess is there were quality control issues given how quickly this broke for us with only light use.