International Babywearing Week 2013

Next week is International Babywearing Week and Babywearing Around Tulsa has many ways for you to get involved!  Check out our schedule of both on-line and social activities!

Model It Monday (social) - Meet up at Hunter Park at 3:30pm for a fun babywearing photoshoot. Group shoot is free, mini sessions available for $5.  Fees for the mini sessions will benefit the Lending Library and will be collected at the time of the shoot.
Manly Monday (on-line) - share pics of your favorite babywearing men

Tutorial Tuesday -

Social - Babywearing 101 with C.J. North at Liberty Park in Sapulpa. 6:00pm 

On-line - Check out a blog post sure to get your creative juices flowing

Work Out Wendesday -
Social - Meet up at the playground at 96th and Riverside for a babywearing walk at 3:00.  This walk will be down the path along Riverside Drive and will be easily navigable by strollers, so even if you have multiple kids and don't want to tandem, don't let that stop you.  There is a park with playground and parking, we will meet there to start our walk.
On-line - share pictures or links to your favorite babywearing workouts

Throwback Thursday - Post your very first babywearing picture

Fun For All Friday -
Social - Head over to the OKC Zoo for a fun playdate with both the OKC and Lawton babywearing groups. State-wide playdate!  The fun will start at 10am.
On-line - Share your most fun babywearing picture or story

Shout it Saturday -
Social - Grab your favorite carrier and join us at the Tulsa zoo at 10am to share the babywearing love with everyone you meet. We will meet inside the gates at the big globe.

On-line - Share the BWATulsa facebook page or blog on your own personal page and see how many new parents and caregivers we can interest in sharing the gift of babywearing with their little one. 

Social Media Sunday - share your experiences from the week.  Consider writing a blog post about how babywearing has affected your life or about how much fun you had over the past week!  Blog posts can be emailed to BabywearTulsa@gmail.com. 

On top of all of that, all week long we will be running a Babywearing Photo Scavenger Hunt!  Ashley Ritchie will post more details on that soon.  I know she has prizes lined up and is seeking a few more.  All pictures submitted to the babywearing photo scavenger hunt are required to be taken during international babywearing week.  

Somer Johnson is a Babywearing enthusiast and Momma to E, a bundle of energy.  She is also addicted to cloth diapers and makes and sells wool dryer balls as SomerKnits.  Occasionally she also carves out some time to knit, spin or weave her main pre-baby passions.

FireSpiral Tester Playdate and Review

Ashley Ritchie and I were lucky enough to get to share a tester slot this past week for the traveling FireSpiral tester.  FireSpiral is a fairly new woven wrap company.  This traveling tester has only been making the rounds a few months and their first set of preorder wraps have just shipped off to their new homes.  FireSpiral is and will be using constructive user feedback to influence the manufacturing of their future wraps.  Testers help to determine how a heavily used wrap will wear over time.  Sending the wrap to many different areas, with different mamas and different wrapping styles helps the company get a variety of perspectives in their feedback.

The tester pattern is called Star Map.  It is a beautiful and rich looking design.  I personally loved the color and look of the wrap.  I love blue but I wasn't sure until I saw it in person if I would really love the actual Star Map design.

By the time we received it, the tester wrap was very soft and well broken in.  The wrap is 100% cotton but had the soft feel of a Natibaby linen only thinner.  I compared it to my grey/red gears only thinner and another member compared it to her milky way indigo in feel, only thinner again.

I personally found the wrap to be very easy to wrap with.  The passes were smooth and tightened easily.  I also found the wrap to be very supportive with my almost 19 month old, pictured above.  I was able to tighten so well that I had far more excess in a double hammock tied tibetan than I normally do with a 6.

We did some size comparisons because when holding the tester up it looked very narrow but once we started wrapping with it it seemed like a normal width.  It turns out that the wrap is slightly narrower than an Oscha JKCC I had on hand, the same width as a KoKaDi Erna and a handwoven Hearti, the edge of which you can see just peeking out on the right of this photo.  The super wide wrap underneath is a Calypso handwoven, there was at least a 6 inch difference there.  As I mentioned, once we started wrapping with it we found the width to be perfect.

These two had a great time in the tester wrap and actually stayed in it quite a while.  She found it to be super comfortable and the baby thought it was quite tasty!  I think she would have snuck off with the wrap if she could have.  ;-)

We got to try the tester with all sizes of babies.  Here is Lori with her almost 3 year old.  She also found the wrap to be very supportive and comfortable.  Look at that happy boy grin!

Here she is again with her smaller squish, Fischer.  He also seemed fairly content in the wrap.  Fischer is generally a handwoven snob, spending most of his time carried in his favorite Hearti, but he gave this wrap two drooly thumbs up.

So, my overall opinion is I would definitely recommend this wrap!  I am not sure how they feel straight out of the package but I can say with certainty that once they are broken in they feel and wrap like a dream.  I hope FireSpiral continues to make beautiful wraps and maybe one day I will get to have one in my own collection.  I would definitely rate this wrap as toddler worthy, more on the level of a good broken in oscha than a somewhat less supportive Gira.

Thank you to all the mamas who can out to the FireSpiral tester playdate.  I had a great time and I appreciate you all taking this time to give your opinions on this new wrap.

**Please take all of this with a grain of salt.  This blog post is my personal opinion.  Different people will love and feel differently about different wraps.  And I sure can use the word different a lot.

Somer Johnson is a Babywearing enthusiast and Momma to E, a bundle of energy.  She is also addicted to cloth diapers and makes and sells wool dryer balls as SomerKnits.  Occasionally she also carves out some time to knit, spin or weave her main pre-baby passions.