Mutsy Grow-Up! Review and Giveaway

Mutsy Grow-Up!

Peo­ple always told me I wouldn’t believe how quickly my child would grow, but things are get­ting ridicu­lous around here. My almost-two-year old has sud­denly decided he’s a forty-five-year-old busi­ness­man. While his mis­con­cep­tion can be enter­tain­ing, espe­cially when he demands the car keys and shouts “Bye Mama!” while head­ing for the door with his dad’s brief­case, it can cre­ate ten­sion at meal­times. Because, obvi­ously, grown-ups don’t eat their din­ners off high chair trays. They like to be part of the flow of con­ver­sa­tion. They want to pass the salt.

My son’s new­found matu­rity (along with Jack­son Pollock-inspired food art projects I men­tioned ear­lier) led me to search for a way to bring him up to the big kids’ table while keep­ing him con­tained, safe, and com­fort­able. It also wouldn’t hurt if the solu­tion added to, instead of detracted from, our kitchen decor. I hap­pened upon the idea of a booster seat, friend of small-kitchened fam­i­lies every­where, and from there I found the Mutsy Grow-Up! booster.

The Grow-Up! (yes, that excla­mataion mark is part of the offi­cial prod­uct name) is a step up from seats like the basic and ubiq­ui­tous plas­tic Fisher-Price Healthy Care Booster. It has a sturdy plas­tic base with nicely padded feet to pre­vent chair dam­age, topped by a thick, foam-like seat. (The seat feels like the same kind of mate­r­ial as a Bumbo Seat.) An adjustable sys­tem of straps attaches it to a normal-size din­ing chair and works as shoul­der and/or waist belts to secure the child in the seat.

My son loves the Grow-Up! It raises him high enough to reach his food and see his table­mates, while keep­ing him com­fort­able and secure. The soft seat is tex­tured and not slip­pery and the waist belt holds him firmly in place. It also lacks the awk­ward assem­bly of its big­ger sib­ling the Easy­Grow, as it relies mainly on a strap/belt sys­tem instead of the prob­lem­atic slide-in safety bar. Like the Easy­Grow, how­ever, this seat is very good-looking, and is one of the few boost­ers on the mar­ket that appears like fur­ni­ture, not like we’ve dragged some­thing from the toy­box into our kitchen. The mod color choices are an added bonus. The price tag ($49.66 on Ama­zon) is on the high end of the booster seat mar­ket, but hav­ing sam­pled some of its com­peti­tors, I would say the qual­ity and design of the Grow-Up! make it worth the higher cost.

On the down­side, the Grow-Up! is not as portable as many other boost­ers, so if you’re look­ing for some­thing that folds into a lit­tle cube every time you’d like to take it to Grandma’s house, this prob­a­bly isn’t the prod­uct for you (try the Sack-n-Seat!). The shoul­der straps are a bit awk­ward — they hang off the back and never seem to quite find a sta­ble place to rest once they’re buck­led — so we don’t use them, since my child is old enough to do with­out them.

Keep in mind that this booster is not a high chair sub­si­tute for small infants, as it lacks the back and head sup­port they require,and it doesn’t have a tray attach­ment. But that’s part of its charm — it’s designed with tod­dlers in mind, so it’s tar­geted to their desire to sit at the big-kid table.

So it seems I’ve found a prac­ti­cal way to make my kid happy at din­ner time. Now if I could only get him to turn off his Black­berry while he eats.

We’re giv­ing away a Mutsy Grow-Up! to one lucky Mamas­World­wide reader!
Enter to win by:
–Leav­ing a com­ment on this post
–Link­ing to this give­away from your blog, and then com­ment here with a link to your link

Each reader can enter twice — once with a reg­u­lar com­ment, and once with a link com­ment. Do so by mid­night (12am) Pacific Time on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 13th. Be sure to include your e-mail address in the com­ment sign-in sec­tion so we can con­tact you if you win. We’ll choose one entrant at ran­dom. We can only pay to mail this within the USA, so please enter only if you have a USA mail­ing address.

In addi­tion, don’t for­get that Goore’s online store is offer­ing an exclu­sive dis­count for Mamas World­wide read­ers — receive 10% off the pur­chase of any Mutsy prod­ucts by enter­ing code MWMU10 at check­out.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Mutsy EasyGrow Review and Discount (1)
• Good Stuff: Sack-N-Seat (5)
• Pedipeds Shoes - Review and Giveaway! (34)
• HABA Toy Food (4)
• The Snack Trap (1)

Tagged as: booster, eating, Feeding, giveaways, Grow-Up!, high chairs, Mutsy, product review, reviews, toddler