Toddlers

If you’re looking for the ultimate list of the BEST Trader Joe’s favorites for toddlers – you’ve come to the right place. Oh Trader Joe’s, how could I live without you?! How would I keep my hangry toddlers filled to the brim with snacks, lest they whine at me all day? How would I get dinner …

Remember before you had kids, when your dinnertime was a cherished time to unwind with your spouse, catch up on each other’s days, discuss the latest world events, and just be connected?

Or – let’s be real – a time to eat on the couch, watch TV, and play on Facebook next to your spouse while you both zone out after an exhausting day of work?

Dinnertime with a toddler is basically the same as that, if you did all of those things while wrestling a rattlesnake. Not only is it physically exhausting you from its surprising strength for its size, but you’re actually afraid for your life because it could bite you at any moment. But at the same time, you and the snake both gotta eat, so you’re just powering through and trying to get at least half the plate of food into your mouths before one of you completely breaks (and we all know which one of you it’s going to be).

Getting gifts for babies has always been a challenge for me. They don’t really have interests yet, like older kids, and it’s hard to know what toys are developmentally right for what age, unless you’re living and breathing it.

That’s why I created my Gift Guide for Babies last year, and I got such a great response to it, that I thought I’d create more of them as my son continues to grow into new toys. Some of the toys on that list are still big favorites in our house, so make sure to visit that list too, if you haven’t already.

So with that, here are his current favorites:

Toddlers are monsters. We all know this. We don’t need another mommy blog post regaling all the ways our toddlers terrorize us on a daily basis.

What we do need is a shift in perspective. Yes, your child is going to be a deranged lunatic for at least 2 more years, but let’s look on the bright side, shall we?

So there I was, on the floor of the Walmart deli, crawling after my baby who’d made a break for the puddle of spilled rotisserie chicken juice, when a grown man approached me slowly and asked: “Um. Do you need a cart?”

It was in that moment that I realized: I am that mom right now.