Mile High Mom: Clickety-Clack Bouncer

Before Jackson was born, I registered for an adorable little bouncy seat. It matched his bedding set, was gender neutral so it could be used for any future child and was understated looking, which is something that I looked for in things that went in my house. One of the first times I put him in it, the bar with the adorable little bears hanging from it fell on his face. It didn't hurt him or anything, but was a very bad design and really not appropriate for little ones. I avoided putting him in it. He didn't even act like he liked it anyway. When he was a couple months old, we went to a friend's house and

they had this bouncy seat. I put Jackson in it and he laid there for over an hour, mesmerized by that waterfall. I refused to buy him another bouncy seat and just dealt with our boring and borderline unsafe one until he outgrew it. But this time around, I really wanted that waterfall bouncer. They go for a cool $64.99 at Babies-R-Us. That's a crazy amount of money to spend on something I already have. Well, this weekend a local mother's group was having a HUGE baby and children's items consignment sale. I went on Saturday to pick up some summer clothes for Jackson and new baby (more on that later) but I asked a friend, who is part of the mother's group, and got to go to the preview sale the day before, to see if she could find the bouncer for me. She found one for $12! When she delivered it to me, I immediately put the batteries in it and turned it on. Only to see this happening:

That obnoxious clicking sound the frog is making not soothing for a baby and is certain to drive this mama nuts! So, in the spirit of DIYing and money saving, I decided to try to fix it. Even if it meant ripping the frog off completely. I was mostly interested in the lights and waterfall anyway. So I took the bar off, took all of the screws out and opened it up. This is what it looked like.

It wasn't abundantly clear what was making the frog clickety-clack so I put it back together, without the screws in it, and put it back in the seat and turned it on. (It has to be in the seat to work....that's it's power source) I then managed to pry it open, just enough to see inside and identify the clickety-clack source.

All I'd have to do is take those three screws and the arm connected to the roundy round thing off and that should stop the frog.

So I did. And I put it back together. I put it back on the seat and turned it on. It worked! The frog no longer clickety-clacked, but this was happening instead:

I have no idea how that happened. I don't even see how the monkey is connected to the frog. But at least I knew where the clickety-clack was coming from on this side

and how to stop it from going clickety-clack

After losing the arm on the monkey side, I put it back together, put it on the seat and turned it on. Now we have this:

So, it's not perfect. The monkey doesn't swing and the frog doesn't bounce. But really, it's SO much better. And for $12, I'm totally happy!

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