Give her a boost!

I think my previous entry on high chairs is obsolete. You see, I’ve convinced myself that high chairs are totally useless, unless: you are feeding a very little baby (say, under six months) and need something that can contain this very small baby with a five point harness, tilt this very small baby waaaaaaay back (I’m not sure why this is important, but it seems to be mentioned as an important feature in lots of reviews) and cushion this small baby with lots of padding.

Otherwise (and having not fed Finn solid foods until she was six months old, this is what I should have done) buy the very amazing Healthy Care Booster Seat made by (gasp!) Fisher-Price. I am not a big fan of Fisher-Price, but it’s not because every thing they make is plastic. Really it’s because they employ designers that make plastic look like crap. Which is not a plastic prerequisite (more on totally cool plastic design in a minute).

The Healthy Care Booster Seat was obviously not designed by the same person who designed this Fisher-Price product. I am not going to tell you why it’s so ugly; if you don’t think it’s ugly, you should stop reading this website and buy it – it got great reviews.

Actually the Healthy Care Booster Seat also got great reviews. Here’s why:

- folds compactly so it’s easily toted along to restaurants, friend’s houses, etc.

- one piece seat is really easy to clean

- the tray has a cover, so if you’re out you don’t have to clean the tray until you get home

- three point harness (ok, this is not as safe as a 5 point harness)

- three different height settings

- convertible from high chair to booster seat (back and trays snap off for different stages)

- the tray is small enough to fit in a dishwasher (one caveat – it’s a lot smaller than standard high chair trays)

And here’s why I give it a great review:

- not only is the seat easy to clean, but the thing is so small and easy to take on/off the chair, that you run the entire seat under the tap

- really, really inexpensive ($25)

- has a harness, unlike most booster seats

- the white, blue and green solid color scheme is pretty cool

I do have a few issues with the Healthy Care Booster Seat. First, there’s the name; I’m not sure in what way a booster seat provides “healthy care.” It sounds like it’s going to brush your child’s teeth and change her nappy after she’s eaten dinner. Or maybe it’s an example of Engrish (like “How many much nutrition did you know”? Could they not have come up with something more exciting and less medical? Like Hipster Booster Seat (a pun!) or maybe just Not-Ugly Booster Seat.

Anyway, the bigger issue is that the booster seat (or any booster seat, for that matter) does not fit in our Eames chairs which have seats shaped like Pringle potato chips. So… we actually spent more money on a chair to hold the booster seat than on the seat itself.

This is where we get to talk about totally cool plastic design: Jasper Morrison’s Air Chair is 100% molded plastic, comes in several colors and looks super cool (for only $70!). The design is simple enough that one on either end of the table will complement rather than compete with Charles and Ray Eames’ 1946 masterpieces. When Finn is tall enough to sit in in an Eames dining chair herself, we’ll move the Air Chairs up to the study.

On the advice of my interior designer friend we decided to forgo all of the cool colors (orange! sky blue!) and stick with white. I have to face facts – most of the color in my life comes from the many, many toys strewn around the house.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm and is filed under feeding, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.