

Ok all you masters of deduction, take a crack at this one. We were generously gifted a swing from the Lielands (the blue one). It swings side-to-side or front-to-back. It has six speeds, a mobil, and plays music. We quickly realized the power of the swing. We use it during the day only and it works beautifully. Whenever they are fussing, or Laurin needs a break, they go in it and relax/sleep. But, having twins, we need another little helper. We searched online for another swing from Walmart due to our abundance of gift cards, and found this little rainforest number. It had the same features as the aquarium swing, so we went for it. Upon bringing it home, we realized it had been returned at least once. The parts were shoved in the box, there were no instructions, and I think it was missing two screws. Despite these setbacks, my man skills allowed me to assemble the apparatus in record time. When we started testing it out, we realized it had the opposite effect of the aquarium swing. We would put them in it calm, and they would slowly start to freak out. To further the experiment, we switched them during a freak out from the rainforest to the aquarium. Like someone waved a magic wand the crying stopped. So, after less than 24 hours of use we returned the rainforest. I had found that Babies R Us was the only place that had the aquarium on their website. We showed up there to double our pleasure and were told that they only carried them online these days. Fighting back tears, I inquired further and learned that Once Upon a Child often has them. Being a second hand store I thought it was odd that they often had a specific swing as they would need to have been sold one from an owner. Anyway, since it was on the way to Walmart we stopped in. Low and behold they had exactly one aquarium swing sitting on the floor. I took three steps into the store, told the lady I wanted to buy that swing, and walked out 2 minutes later with an assembled aquarium swing. My new favorite store is Once Upon a Child. We returned the stupid rainforest swing and got the better swing (albeit used) for a third the price. So, take a look at the pictures my loyal braintrust of readers and hypothesize why they hated the rainforest and love the aquarium swing. I should add that the aquarium seems to swing faster and has a hard plastic full seat whereas the rainforest had slower swing speeds and more of a hammock-style back support. The butt support was hard plastic, but they back was just supported by the fabric being stretched over an arced bar.