Top Baby Gifts From a Pop Culture Obsessed Dad
Since this week is all about the best baby gifts, we decided to ask one of our MiLOWE husbands for his suggestions. Without further ado, here are his top picks!
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Obviously the greatest gift we could give our children is to radically reduce our carbon emissions so they don’t spend their young adulthood eating mutant scorpion-rat-pigeons in a Mad Max-just-not-at-all-fun desert wasteland, but since “Solve Climate Change” is hard to add to a baby shower registry not to mention a pretty heavy request to unload on shower guests like your Great Uncle Lewis and all the cool young moms and dads you just recently force-friended in your neighborhood, here are some fresh baby shower gift ideas from a somewhat more dude-oriented, pop culture obsessed POV.
“Buffy The Vampire Slayer” Book from Pop Classics
Pop culture fanatics dream of the day they can share their favorite cult film or most cherished B-side compilation import with their tiny meat clones, but at this point it’ll be literally FOREVER before it’s parentally acceptable to show your child “Suspiria” (the original, obviously). So in the meantime, you’ve got Kim Smith’s Pop Classics Series to tide you over and look rad on your baby’s bookshelf. While choice picks in the series like “E.T.” and “Back To The Future” stick pretty close to the source material (regardless of how confusing “Back To The Future” might be to an infant), our personal favorite is “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” which finds an eight-year old Buffy Summers dealing with a spooky closet during a sleepover. While this great kids read is not exactly canon (since, for starters, we all know that Buffy doesn’t meet her “Scooby gang” cohorts Xander and Willow until her sophomore year of high school), we can let that slide because the book is adorable, empowering and chock-full of Easter eggs for parent fans.
Rock ‘n’ roll baby clothes are mostly one of those “Awesome Only In Theory” ideas that usually look either super cheap and ugly or overly cutesy and inauthentic to the whole rocker lifestyle you’re hoping to gift upon your unknowing human grub to begin with. Just try Googling “Punk Baby Clothes” and get ready to swear off Etsy forever. While I never did get that perfect Napalm Death onesie I had my heart set on, Rowdy Sprout has proven to be the exception to the rule when it comes to cool music-oriented kid clothes. Our daughter always gets complements on her Parliament Funkadelic and Beastie Boys tees, usually from cooler, more tattooed parents which makes me feel like I’ve finally done something right with my life. From Run DMC to Led Zeppelin, Zappa to the Clash, Rowdy Sprout has the megadope baby threads you need on your registry and on your child.
Instruments are one of the absolute best gifts for babies, but so many are more “toy” than they are functional instrument. These Loog guitars bridge the gap beautifully. They sound great and look even better. So while your friends’ newborn is developing the finger articulation and attention span required to actually play the thing it will act as a super cool decorative showpiece for the nursery.
Ours is a house of constant music and it’s all made possible by the pairing of Sonos Speakers and a Spotify Premium account. Need instant chill vibes in the nursery? Dial up some Brian Eno or one of those Baby Mozart comps if you’re trying to be all upscale about it. Impromptu dance party (aka burn off some energy time) in the living room? Time to unleash that kid-friendly, high energy baby rave mix you made back in the first trimester when you had time to do things like make eighty-song playlists for your unborn future baby. Being able to conjure music instantly for a baby via your smart phone can be an instant mood shifter, stress reliever or fun maker and it’s a great way to share some of your favorite things with your baby (plus Spotify includes that helpful little “EXPLICIT” label in case you don’t remember there being any swears on your favorite N.W.A. jam). With our Sonos/Spotify set up we like to sneak in “homework” music from Lee “Scratch” Perry, Nina Simone, LCD Soundsystem, Herbie Hancock and New Order in between endless, repeat listens of the “Frozen” soundtrack in the hope that our daughter grows up with musical interests outside of “Princess Pop Songs About Cold Climate Precipitation.”
Babies are super gross. And having one throws you square into the deep end of the bodily function swimming pool regardless of your personal yuck threshold. But gross gets sorta fun (or at least more tolerable) when you have weird contraptions to help you deal with the realities of parenthood. One of the best is this Japanese Baby Nose Tweezer. Complete life saver and really flies under the gifting radar. You’re always going to have those tried and true bulbs around for major sick days (just make sure to clean them on the reg!) and some people swear by the NoseFrida but the idea of sucking out the contents of my daughter’s congested nasal cavity with my own lungs is just one step beyond what I can handle, so this little item is strangely useful and perfect for clean freaks like myself. When Lowie was born you could only get the imported variety from Japan but now a quick Amazon search reveals plenty of stateside knockoffs, which I cannot vouch for here. I say stick with the original (make sure to account for that extra travel time) as it comes in delightful Japanese packaging sure to amuse even your most hipster of soon-to-be-parent friends. It’s like the perfect stocking stuffer for your baby shower gift.
- Chris
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