So, here we go!

This blog is a little late we've actually been here 4 months already! "Here" being a parent that is, but having had those four months I thought it a good idea to set up a blog to see if anyone else is encountering the same challenges.

My name's Wayne, and I've always been pretty tall - tallest in class throughout my childhood (which made me easy to spot in school photos - centre, back row every time), and I've learned to accept, and embrace my height. My wife, Bev has also been taller than average for most of her life, and is proud of her lofty frame.

However, when you become a parent you're faced with a whole new set of challenges - and then some if you happen to be outside the "average".

My wife and I are considered taller than average - me being 6ft 7 and my wife being 6ft. There are taller people, and there are shorter, but for the purposes of this blog we'll consider ourselves tall.

Ever since discovering we were expecting our first child we've been constantly surprised by the amount of equipment, advice and guidance that seems to cater for Mr & Mrs Average, whilst ignoring Mr & Mrs Above-Average.

One of the first things we did was look at buggies.

Before we got into the whole "does it have enough cup-holders, will my iPod connect etc" we had to make sure we fitted it, or more importantly, it fitted us.

The choice is simply mind blowing, however once we tested a few we soon discovered a number of problems with a large number and were able to narrow our choices down.

One of the obvious criteria was does the handle come up high enough - in the majority of cases, no. We found a number that came up high, but not quite high enough. Quinny, Bugaboo, Bebeconfort and Stokke all seemed about as high as they'd go.

The shop we visited (no longer trading) allowed you to "test drive" the buggies, which proved invaluable in our case. We set each buggy to our desired height and had a walk around the shop, took them outside and folded/unfolded them, folded them back up again and tried to load them in the boot of the car (we'll come back to that in a minute).

One of the first things we noticed was that although the handle came up high we were kicking the axle/wheels when we walked. That discounted a couple more models/makes.

We were eventually left with the Stokke Xplory with travel system (Maxi Cosy car seat). Although expensive - it ticked all our boxes and was by far the most comfortable to use.

Here we are on our first outing once the snow had cleared enough that we weren't skating all over the place.


























































The pictures show the Xplory with the pram/carrycot attachment. The beauty of the pram is that it could double as a crib/moses basket - meaning we didn't have to buy an additional moses basket and stand.

The only trouble - was that Hayden soon outgrew the pram too, but it gave us the flexibility and ability to move him about, and give him somewhere to sleep wherever it became convenient for us.















Anyway - let's skip back a few months to the shop. Once we'd chosen the Xplory, we then attempted to load it into the car, but that's another story...