Maine Nesties
maeghan21
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Play kitchen
What are your favorites? Think we'll hold off till Xmass because we want to get a bunch of Summer stuff for Caroline, but it was brought up the other day and incase IL's ask I want to be able to make a couple if suggestions. Thanks!
Re: Play kitchen
We got James the KidKraft Cook Together Kitchen for Xmas last year. He plays with it almost daily and seems to really enjoy it. It lives in our kitchen and he often "cooks" while I cook.
Pros: lots of doors to open and shut, raised stove parts makes it more realistic, some (not a ton, but decent amount) of counter space, gender neutral colors, sink that he can pull out and dump stuff into the hole below, phone that he uses to call Grammy "Me" and Grandpa "Pa", no electronics or noises except clicky knobs, solid construction (thanks to a LOT of parts and extensive instructions), not too big for our small space, and made of wood.
Cons: Half of our clicky knobs lost their clicky already (though Customer Service was awesome and sent out a bunch of replacements free and quickly that DH replaced), wood is pressed wood, the sink isn't really supposed to come out, the shelf in the fridge comes out easily which James loves to pull out (so much that its been taken away for now), the lower doors can fall on his feet or be used to boost him up in an unsafe way, it is raised off the floor an inch or two which means we lose stuff under it all the time, and it is heavy as all getout.
All in all, we got it for a good price with free shipping from Amazon and we're really happy with it. I'd have preferred an all wood one, but they are too expensive for our budget. We got a ton of Melissa & Doug wooden food and pots to go with it, and along with empty egg cartons, empty spice containers, and tupperware it keeps him pretty entertained. 8 out of 10
Cooking up something at "Scooby's - a Baby Fusion Cuisine Cafe"
All our pros are the same as Erika's for this kitchen, except for the gender neutral colors part:
http://www.amazon.com/KidKraft-53109-Island-Kitchen-Pastel/dp/B000AQADE2
It was also wicked easy to assemble, and the two-sided thing has come in really handy when multiple kids have been at our house.
Our clicky functions are still clicking almost a year later; I really can't find fault with anything in the design. The only problem is that it's only available in pastels; the primary one is discontinued.
Owen LOVES his kitchen.
And no offense to anyone who may have bought it, but from what I've seen in play areas and others' homes, the Step2 plastic kitchen, while fun, gets really grubby really quickly.
We have this one
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3122843
that we got Lily for Christmas. It had a lot of really cute wooden play sets, too. Even Brooke ( who is 5) like to play with it
We've also had an awesome time playing with this on in stores:
http://www.myquickbuy.com/servlet/the-17/Childs-Apron-Pot-Pan/Detail
We have a Step2 plastic play kitchen and I haven't had any problems with it getting overly dirty. Besides, it's plastic -- it wipes clean.
The kitchen has some electronics -- the microwave buttons make microwave sounds and the burners have two buttons placed so that when you put a pot on the burner it makes a boiling sound and when you put a frying pan on the burner it makes a sizzling sound. DD gets a kick out of the sounds.
For play kitchen food we have a lot of the Melissa and Doug stuff, both wooden and plastic (the plastic fruits and veggies are nicely heavyweight, so they don't crush when you squeeze them). For pots and pans besides what came with the kitchen we got a metal kid size pan set from Ikea and several wood and plastic utensils from the kitchen section at Ikea.