Tuesday 24 January 2012

Special deliveries

What a week for deliveries.

I’ll spare you the details of the first part, but needless to say our second son Ewan was delivered safely at 7pm on Tuesday 17th January, 2.5 weeks early. We were released on Wednesday at lunchtime and arrived home to find a massive Quinny box sitting in the dining room. J

2 deliveries in 2 days, was rather nice. I don’t think Ewan could wait to try out his new pushchair!!!

The box is certainly big. If you’re planning on walking out of a shop with one then it’s seriously worthwhile thinking about whether your boot is big enough as the box isn’t just wide, it’s very deep too. If you get a choice, get it delivered as that must be simpler and save some headaches of getting it into a car. At some point when we’ve got a chance we’ll get the box back down from the loft and try it in the boot of our car – I think it will go, but as it’s a big car I wouldn’t hold out much hope for many people unless you start putting seats down.

Opening the box is supposed to be like opening a gift. Nice theory but in reality it’s a box (especially when tired having recently given birth), it’s rather a pain to have to undo 4 sides and wiggle the top off. I can’t see that many pregnant women (most heavily??) fully appreciating the fiddle of having to wiggle the lid off.

Once the lid is off it was a case of wow. We’ve got the Blue Reliance and the colour immediately sprung out of the box to catch my eye. We got everything out and slowly hubby Andy put it together. – Summary video to follow when it’s been put together. It wasn’t too hard to complete, some of it is similar to the Buzz such as putting on the front wheel and shopping basket.  I think we had the whole thing up and ready for use within about 20 minutes.



First impressions after a visit out:

Looks wise I have compared it to the Buzz in the past and although it does clearly take inspiration from the design of the Buzz, the Moodd reinvents it and takes the style to the next level in class. The back wheels are particularly striking in matt and gloss black with lovely shaping.   The chassis is in principle like the Buzz but has slightly different proportions. Once moving it around, I immediately noticed that the handlebar doesn’t come up as high. It’s still more than enough for most people but I did like the tiny bit of extra height I got with the Buzz as it made pushing it with my wrist problems a little easier when they were going through a bad phase.

The seat is lovely to look at. Rather futuristic but practical. First son who’s a big 3 year old can still get in it (pic will follow another day) and do the straps up so it will take children of most sizes. Having the single hand recline function is lovely and much easier than the 2 handed approach needed with some (Buzz included).

Handling is brilliant. I seem to remember that it’s heavier than the Buzz in actual weight but it felt soooooo much lighter, it was an absolute dream to push around the shops. The easiest pushchair I’ve ever manoeuvred with one hand.

Baby Nest:

This is an interesting one and something that I did want to post about fairly quickly. Looking at it my first thought was that it looked fantastic. The colour highlight is beautiful and the button detail a nice touch. Open it up and there’s a young baby head support and another that pads out the bottom so it’s a snugger fit. A great bit of design work is that these are both zipped in so they aren’t going to go wandering yet can easily be removed as babe grows bigger. For use with the pushchair you do have to put the straps through so baby can be strapped in before it’s done up.

My bugbear with the nest is how it does up. Pull it shut and do the zip up fully and the head of your young baby is virtually completely covered. There isn’t any scope to adjust this as the straps holding the nest in position mean there isn’t any leeway to move baby up so they aren’t covered. I think this is a big flaw as I certainly don’t want my baby’s face covered, and if you don’t do it up completely and try to create an additional fold so it’s not covering their face; it does need regular checking to ensure that it hasn’t sprung back up over their face.


There is a simple solution to this and I hope Quinny do take this on board and make the adjustment in future production runs. It needs a second button further down. This would then allow it to be fixed into position (where I’d want it to end up is in the pic below) that is more appropriate for a younger baby.  At some point I will get my friend to try it with her 5 month old to check that this issue doesn’t exist with older babies.


Having said all this about the baby nest, if I was buying the Moodd I would buy the carrycot as well as I prefer young babies not to need to be held in by straps. That’s just my personal opinion and preference as if out for a long day I’d rather they were not restricted by straps in their pushchair/carrycot having been restricted when in the car seat to get to wherever we’re going.
I'm so far very impressed with the Moodd and looking forward to put it through it's paces in the coming weeks and months as we settle into our expanded family life.
More pics from our first trip out:




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