New Triple Stroller

I have a triplet mom friend, Sarah, who is a single mom (by choice).  Her triplets are three.  I can't imagine running after three little ones all by myself. She is a rock star.  I've actually followed her blog since before our boys were born (and before I had even met her in person).  It's a great blog and you should definitely check it out: http://omgtheresthree.com.

One of her biggest hits on her blog is her stroller.  She raves on it.  I sat next to her at one of our multiples meetings and she was telling me all about why this stroller rocks.  It's the Valco Tri Mode Twin stroller with Joey seat attachment.  So it's actually a double stroller that you can make into a triple if you buy the attachment piece.  The stroller itself retails for around $700.  Once you buy the Joey seat and canopy the stroller totals about $850.  Yikes!  I knew right away that we couldn't afford this stroller.

We were previously using the Triple Decker stroller which is just a metal frame that you can click your infant carriers into.  We call it "The Bus" as it is very long.  They boys will soon grow out of their infant carriers and then this stroller will be useless to us.  Aside from these two factors, it also does not have a brake which is really inconvenient and quite frankly, not very safe.  It doesn't have a swivel wheel either, so you have to tip it to make a turn which is super annoying.  So basically, while it's worked fine for us thus far, I kind of hate this stroller.

We started researching affordable strollers online and found two that we could (kind of) afford.  The Foundations The Trio Triple Tandem (or Quad) which is around $400 or the Baby Trend Triplet stroller (inline stroller).  We were leaning towards the Foundations one.  The Baby Trend one had horrible reviews and lots of complaints about the second seat having no leg room.  The Foundations one wasn't great either though.  It had a safety feature hand brake that you had to squeeze with your hand anytime you were moving.  If you let go of it, it would activate the brake and make the stroller stop.  While this definitely makes the stroller safer, I envisioned myself getting carpal tunnel from constantly squeezing the brake.  Overall the reviews for this stroller just weren't that great.

I was starting to feel like we were going to have to throw away $400 on a crappy stroller simply because it was all we could afford.  We started looking on Craiglist for the Valco stroller that Sarah has.  This stroller is apparently very hard to find and we couldn't find it anywhere remotely close to the Kansas City area.  So we expanded our search to all the (somewhat) surrounding states.  We REALLY wanted this stroller!  We ended up finding one in excellent condition for $350 in Fayetteville, AR.  I happen to have a friend who lives there.  I asked her if she happened to be coming back to Kansas anytime soon and she said she was going to be in the KC area the very next weekend!  It seemed too good to be true.  She met up with the seller and bought the stroller for us and delivered it that next weekend.  We were so excited!  We had to buy the Joey seat and canopy new unfortunately, so the stroller ended up costing us almost $500.  We've taken it out a handful of times since then, and I'm very happy with our choice.  I even took it to Deanna Rose by myself and never had any troubles fitting through doors or gates or anything (it's just a little narrower than our double jogger).  It's a great stroller and I think it will work well for us for the next couple years.