ABC Kids Expo & Jaron is 9 Months Old!

Whew, what a weekend! I was finally able to attend the ABC Kids Expo after wanting to go the past two years and it was in Louisville, KY this year which was only a 6 hour drive away (vs. Las Vegas last year and NYC the year before). It is one of the biggest juvenile expos in the world and there were over 900 companies represented from Britax to Skip Hop to Fuzzi Bunz diapers and everything in between.

There was even a celebrity sighting of Kelly Kapowski, although I didn't bother to run around looking for her (Saved by the Bell and 91210). Kind of cool, but not really my thing. I guess she has a baby furniture line so she must have been promoting it or stopping by to do something. Anyways, that just paints the picture of what kind of event it was.

Major companies like Fisher Price literally made offices and multi-room booths where in some cases the walls were solid and the contents were not visible unless you had an appointment and checked-in at their front desk. Then there were mom and pop companies, new products and great representation of cloth diapers, baby carriers and green living products.

I was definitely a kid in a candy shop, and was running on adrenaline for the two days. I could have attended all four days and still not have been able to see everything there, but I feel like I made out pretty good-- there were only a handful of companies that I really wanted to talk to that I didn't have the time to and other places that would have been fun to explore.

My biggest meeting was my last scheduled appointment of the weekend with Britax. They were not quite as intimidating as some of the closed walled companies, but they were in the same section, had a front desk and all that jazz. I had worked with them briefly in the past, so I was able to get in touch with them before hand to schedule an appointment. I left my media kit, business card, got the full tour of the floor (many of which I own and I am thoroughly aware of most their products), but came home with their newly released baby carrier that they had me try on.

I am surprised they offered and insisted I take the $150 carrier plus an accessory to go with it, because Jaron spit up all over their perfectly blue carpet. Twice. The only time he spit up the whole weekend and it had to be at Britax! Haha. But everyone was super nice and ran to the back and got napkins and all that jazz. I think they wanted me to have the carrier, because I had my Ergo on and told them I owned, used or tried on a couple dozen different styles and brands. Plus I brought pictures of my accident and they knew how many Britax products I owned (you know, so I was a loyal Britax fan and advocate) including the stroller I was pushing around at the expo. So I think they were excited for me to continue supporting and spreading the word about their brand.

Basically, it was a big networking opportunity for me. I got stacks of business cards, media kits, thumb drives, catalogs, samples and even lucked out with a handful of full-sized products. So hopefully Jeff feels the investment of the trip was worth it! Many of the companies expressed interest in working together and I have some pretty sure things lined up this fall and winter. We will all get in touch over the coming weeks once we all have time to plow through all of the materials and get in a rhythm again. The nice thing is the companies are in the same boat, so I look forward to getting to know lots more cool products. I think I handed out a good 75+ media kits I brought with me, although I didn't count how many I had left.

Lastly, I got to meet a lot of people I have worked with over the years, or the founders and owners of many of the brands I own and love. So it was exhausting, but Jaron was a good sport, charmer (probably the result of some of the samples and products we received) and Kailie and Jeff had fun at the hotel pool and went to see Lion King at the movies! Kailie has been obsessed with Lion King for a couple of months now, even before we knew about the re-release.

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Jaron went to his 9-month well baby appointment this morning and we all got our flu shots for the season. He is still tall and a good size for his age (or so I thought), but is a lot smaller than Kailie was at his age. He was 19.5 lbs., which is barely over what Kailie weighted at 6 months!

I have a busy week ahead as I am unpacking, doing laundry, catching up on hundreds of emails, it's my turn to run mommy preschool Tuesday and Thursday morning and I have to pack for our next big trip to Houston and Japan since we leave this weekend. Oh and blogging. I feel like I am always behind on that!