www.kansascity.com

By LISA GUTIERREZ
The Kansas City Star

Ooh, baby, take a ride in this stroller.

It has pneumatic tires and shock absorbers for an oh-so-smooth glide. There’s a cupholder for Mommy and adjustable handles so she won’t strain her back.


To keep the sun at bay and the bugs away, Mom can clip on a nifty parasol or mosquito net for you.

The cost for this beautifully bodacious baby buggy?

Just $900.

On the showroom floor of Kids’ Rooms in Overland Park, the $900 Bugaboo is the Hummer of the stroller section. It comes with a down-filled baby sleeping bag “so when you have a winter baby you don’t have to take blankets,” says Joe Sorkin, who helps run this family business.

While the store hasn’t sold a truckload of Bugaboos — Midwestern mommies are sensible, after all — it has the bells and whistles often found on today’s bigger, badder and better-than-ever baby strollers.

Good-quality strollers start around $250, making them one of the bigger-ticket items in the nursery.

A far cry from the bucket-on-wheels that poor Victorian moms pushed, these strollers have big, fat tires so modern moms can stroll off-road on trails and beaches. They have rain covers, cargo pockets, weather thermometers and iPod hookups.

That’s what you call fully loaded — some strollers call themselves “SUVs for babies” — and it’s what mommies demand, retailers say. They want strollers that are compact, lightweight, easy to fold, easy to wheel over curbs and fit through doors, and have at least, at least, one cupholder.

Style matters for moms, too, such as the ones for whom a black-and-white polka dot fabric lining is the deciding factor.

As seen in celebrity magazines, strollers have become just as hot an accessory as the babies themselves. The Dutch-designed Bugaboo has been the favored “power toy” of the Hollywood set for several years.

The Aug. 6 edition of In Touch celeb mag shows actress Marcia Cross and model Heidi Klum pushing their pampered offspring in the $899 Orbit Infant System, created by two Stanford-educated designers.

But is it a good idea to buy a stroller just because a supermodel pushes one? The editors of American Baby magazine don’t think so.

“We know plenty of parents who … still buy based on brand name, color or some other superficial reason, like the stroller being named after a car. So be it — you have to live with it,” they note in their stroller-buying guide.

Yes, Jeep makes baby strollers. (Though a stroller by Mini Cooper seems more apt.)

American Baby’s bottom line on stroller buying? Any model safety-certified by the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association will do.

Shelley Wales, a Raytown mom, took advice from a friend, not a celebrity magazine, when she bought a stroller for her baby boy. Her $200 Evenflo baby conveyance is part of a multipart “travel system,” a combination stroller/infant car seat.

Wales likes it because she can easily open and close it with one hand, and she can pull the lining out to wash it. Plus, it has a little sunshade and window flap on the canopy so that she can see Jackson, 3 months old.

“We just thought it offered a little more for your money,” says Wales, a career services specialist at DeVry University.

While the price tag will be the deciding factor for many parents, Consumer Reports suggests that price doesn’t always reflect quality.

When the magazine tested strollers, some inexpensive ones — including a $130 Graco model and $70 stroller by Safety 1st — rated just as high or higher than models that cost several hundred dollars.

High-end amenities, however, are hard to ignore. Top-drawer strollers made of high-grade, lighter-weight aluminum are easier to lift in and out of a car, Consumer Reports found.

They have cushier seats with more back support for the baby. Swivel wheels make them easier to push. The fabrics are higher quality, and the strollers tend to be more durable, something to consider if more than one baby will use it.

But don’t rule out less expensive strollers, the magazine advised. Depending where and how much you plan to use the stroller, a lower-end umbrella stroller — $100 or less — might be the one to schlep to the mall.

In fact, it’s the rare mommy anymore who gets by with just one stroller. Babies simply outgrow them or wear them out.

You could call Overland Park mom Amy Wills a stroller connoisseur. She has three strollers for her 2-year-old daughter, Sierra, and had considered buying a fourth when she has her second baby at the end of August.

When she was pregnant with Sierra, Wills registered for a Graco stroller “system.” It became her workhorse stroller — and was just as unwieldy as a steed, too.

“Grocery stores, that’s fine,” Wills says. “But when you’re in department stores, they are just wide enough to be annoying to go through clothes and things. I think mine has a little odometer reading on it, and a temperature gauge, which, honestly, I don’t know if it’s ever worked.”

She has a cheap umbrella stroller, too, little more than a sling of fabric on a metal frame.

“It’s probably the stroller we all had when we were babies,” says Wills, who works in medical sales. “There’s no storage. It breaks down easily. There are no bells and whistles, but it’s super-handy and super-maneuverable.”

Her third stroller is a jogging stroller with rubber wheels, extremely agile. She passed on the model with the iPod hookup. “They’re playing to people with disposable income, and you can get as fancy as you want,” Wills says.

Now, with baby No. 2 on the way, Wills and her husband are debating the need for a double stroller, another $200 or more purchase.

“But having said that, I don’t know how many times I’m going to need the double stroller, because you’re going to drop some good money for it,” she says. “I have some neighbors who say they’ve only used it four times.

“And then you have to think of storage, too. You can spend a lot of money on a baby, and it’s never-ending. So where are you going to spend it?”

Not on a fancy stroller, says Lenexa mom Summer Cowick, mother of 7-month-old Samantha.

Baby Samantha started out in a hand-me-down stroller, which worked fine until she outgrew it.

Then Cowick and her husband, both runners, switched to a $90 running stroller. “We still use that to this day,” says Cowick, who works with gifted students.

“And that’s great for going on walks. And we have a dog that is very high energy, and we have to take her for a walk at least once a day. And that’s really nice because it has a cupholder and a compartment with a lid where you can put the dog’s ball or your cell phone or your garage door opener.

“It’s the perfect stroller to go to the dog park because it has shocks and everything.”

And, because she’s a typical mommy, Cowick has a second, cheaper, “little punkin’ stroller. And that’s the one we use when we go yard-saling. She’s in and out really fast.”
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