Our daughter is a really happy baby. She’s a joy to have around, almost all the time, except when she’s hungry. When she’s hungry, watch out. She’ll scream and yell and throw herself around like it’s the end of her world. When she’s eating she often continues hurling herself about, reaching for things and looking all around the room. It was a messy, drippy, drooly affair when she was just bottle-feeding. Now that she’s eating some solid foods, it’s a full-contact sport! There’s spinach in her ears and up her nose; mashed carrot is caked under her chin and dried on the straps of her high chair. We couldn’t keep clean shirts on the kid! All those adorable cloth bibs we have – you know the ones – the cute ones from Carter’s and Gerber, with ruffles and hearts and baby animals on them, with sweet sayings like “mommy loves me” and “born to burp,” – those things barely survived a feeding before they were soaked through with a lethal combo of pureed veggies, rice cereal bits and some bizarre sour milk-like toxin. We were desperate for an alternative. And one day, I found an answer, via amazon.com.

The Bella Tunno Silicone Wonder Bib is composed of 100% PVC and BPA-free silicone, and it’s CPSIA Compliant as well as dishwasher safe. Each bib is designed with a lip at the bottom to catch spills. It is adjustable for several different infant and toddler neck sizes and also comes in multiple colors and styles for boys and girls. Immediately upon discovery, I purchased two of the fuchsia with elephants style which is super cute, and we keep one bib in the baby bag at all times because they’re super convenient for use on the go. You can roll them up so they take up very little room in even the most over-crowed diaper bag.

At first, I was over the moon with this bib, and I still think it’s an overall wise purchase. The bib fits our daughter well and because of its larger size provides greater clothing protection from spills, leaks and spit-up. It is so cute. I mentioned that already, didn’t I? Well it’s worth repeating because I’ve gotten several compliments from other mamas, which is always nice. The cleanup is a breeze (literally just rinse it out in the sink and drip dry, or use a little dish liquid for especially scary messes). Also, it’s incredibly reasonably priced at only $13-14, all the more economical when you consider it could replace all your other cloth bibs and could save you money on laundry bills.

My one complaint is (likely) specific to our child and her tendency to pick and pull at things while eating, so she very quickly learned she could pull off the bib due to the construction of the notched closures. Not surprising because she’s learned to pull off bibs with Velcro closures as well. In fact, the only ones she hasn’t been able to pull off are bibs with sturdy metal snaps at the neck, but of course those bibs are not adjustable and are usually cloth. She’s especially motivated to pull off the Bella Tunno now that she’s teething because she loves to chew on the notches at the neck so it’s a big-time struggle to keep it on her. That’s a huge problem immediately after a feeding when that “lip” reservoir is full of liquidy gunk! Several times she’s yanked the bib off and tipped it over, dumping out the ickiness all over the place before mommy and daddy could catch it. Sort of defeats the purpose of the bib and meant that we didn’t really save that much money on laundry bills after all…It’s a shame too because otherwise this is terrific bib.

Because I believe this problem is limited to those select few babies who love to pick, grab and pull while eating, I’m giving this a rating of 4 out of 5 pearls of wisdom. The pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Price: $14 + shipping from Bellatunno.com (save 15% when you join their mailing list)
$13 + shipping from amazon.com (or free shipping with Amazon Prime)

Daily Beauty Wisdom Rating: **** / 5 pearls of wisdom

Thought for the Day:
…but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
~Matthew 19:14 (English Standard Version)
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