When my son was 9 months old her started doing the sofa shuffle - parents will know the one - it's the shuffle along the edge of the sofa ferociously gripping on for dear life, followed by the pondering look of what to do now the sofa length has stopped!!

My son had been taking steps holding onto my fingers and using me as a support frame. But it's not practical for an adult to be leaning down to the height of a 9 month old so they can practice walking!

My fiance and I agreed we needed a baby walker. However, we wanted a safe baby walker as I had read that more accidents happen in bbay walkers than with any other piece of baby equipment - due to things like the baby walker tipping or them being able to shoot all over the place at high speed. So we looked carefully at many different baby walkers.

Walk the walk, but talk the talk??

Looking into the market of baby walkers I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a large variety for us to choose from - some were very cheap, but for a good reason (!), whilst some could be so expensive we could use the money to put a deposit on a family car!

There are many types of walker out there including:

- Beanstalk Activity Walker' (approx £15) - This is a lovely bright coloured baby walker. Babie's can hold onto the handle and walk around. On the front of it you will find 12 different shaped holes, complete with the shapes, so your child can use this as a learning toy too. There is also a phone that rings and plays a small selection of melodies.

- Vtech First Steps Baby walker (approx £30) - This is another brightly coloured baby walker that is a similar design in shape to the Beanstalk walker. This one has a detachable front, that is an activity centre for your child. There are shapes and musical keys that introduce different things including words, letters, colours, music, animals and melodies. There is also a rattling phone to encourage imaginary play.

- Vtech Grow and Go - I do have to say that we were very tempted to buy this one, as we felt it was true value for money due to it having three different stages to it. It has a piano on the top, along with a peek-a-boo mirror, a steering wheel and flashing lights. The Piano can be detached and placed on the floor for safe floor play. The baby can also stand whilst the piano is on the frame and play it that way. Last, but not least, its a walker as the frame has four wheels, which helps stabilise your child whilst they are practising.

Pride in my stride

After many hours pouring over catalogues and discussing pro's and con's we settled on the Stride to Ride walker. You would be mistaken in thinking we were planning troops tactical manoeuvres in war, but no - we are simply being parents! Sometimes it's a war in itself!

Also, we had a recommendation from a close friend who used it for her daughter. I always like to follow the recommendation of a person who owns the product, rather than a commercial review that is simply a selling ploy.

Availability

We found that the Stride to Wide Walker is available in many stores. As it is a Fisher Price toy we found it easy to obtain, as Fisher Price is a highly popular brand. We found that we could buy the baby walker in shops such as:

- Argos, and Argos website www.argos.co.uk

- www.amazon.co.uk - on this website you have the option of buying new, or saving some money and buying it second hand.

- www.ebay.co.uk - There are many ebay sellers on this site selling this item from as little as £4.99 with postage and packaging. I advise that anyone buying from here looks carefully at the feedback of the ebay buyer to ensure they are trsutworthy sellers.

- www.woolworths.co.uk - The Woolworths website is easy to order from and delivery is £4.95 - the one thing I would advise is that I have found in the past that larger items from the Woolworths website can take about a week to arrive,

- Toys R us also have this product, and when we rang around the stores we found that stores had a large quantity of them available. WE were also informed we could order it from their website, www.toysrus.co.uk

We eventually chose to order ours from Toys R Us, as we could order it online. Plus Toys R Us do deliveries on Saturday, which fitted around any work obligations.

Packaging

The box that the baby walker arrived in was rather deceptive - it seemed bulky, large and predictably heavy. But it was actually fairly light and I could pick it up myself without straining myself. Also, the box we received had a clear open fascia with a number of hand sized holes. This allowed us to press a few buttons and hear a few tunes before we opened it. We found that rather amusing as we got to play without anyone knowing what big kids we are!!

Instructions

There is a full list of instructions with the baby walker -in fact it seems the instructions come in every language available on Earth, and maybe Middle Earth too. Apparently I am not that good at instructions, so my partner took them and started by reading out all the parts we should have - every piece accounted for Sir! **clicked heels** He was not amused - lol.

Within the instruction book you have a step by step process explaination. There are also pictures accompanying this, so you can see what the baby walker is supposed to resemble. I feel that even I could have followed those instructions if it wasn't for the Bob the Builder re-incarnate that had taken over my fiances' body!

It is advised that you have a Phillips screwdriver for this. Also, I advise alot of patience. Although the instructions are clear and concise with pictures they are annoying in their layout. The book isnt set out with a page for each language -what they have done is have a page per step. Each page then contains about 20 languages explaining that step, so you have to hunt through the languages to find which one you understand!

Putting the puzzle together

Ingredients

- Stride and Ride pieces

- Instructions

- Phillips Screwdriver

- (optional) A man who thinks this task equates to him sending a rocket to space!

After figuring out the instructions it was pretty easy to put this together. Most of it was a clip on and lock job. The wheels had to be screwed on with a Phillips Screwdriver, but went on very easily with the minimum of fuss.

My Fiance found it all easy until he reached the back board itself. It is a pain to get on, as it feels like you are constantly rotating and shifting to get it into place. Locking it into place was quite frustrating as you need to exert alot of pressure, whilst trying not to be too hard and end up breaking it!

Once this was all done my fiance gave me a task he said even I couldn't get wrong - the stickers! Boo to him - stickers are fun anyway. There was a sheet of stickers and it was easy to tell where to place them.

All in all I believe that assembly took about 20 - 25 minutes and was easier than it looked.

I.D. please madam

As with all toys, Fisher Price have attached an age and weight recommendation for the Stride to Ride Walker. It is designed for children that are 9 months or more, and it's advised up to the weight of 14 kgs -which is about the average weight of a 3 year old. My son has only just stopped using it, and he will be four at the end of this year. So it's certainly a producy that will grow with your child.

The Look

The Stride to Ride Walker is a brightly coloured activity toy. It is boldly coloured - bright red, blue and yellow. All the wheels are chunky and are different colours. It is very attractive to look at and is appealing to children. It's made of hard, durable plastic, and there appears to be no loose choking hazards. The colourful lights and balls within it offer visual stimulation for any child enjoying this.

What does it do?

The Stride to ride Walker is designed to help children with their first steps, and be a supportive and fun walking aid. For a child who is walking they can stand behind the walker and the child can hold on to the green handle. They can then stand between the two blue plastic bars. I found this was a really good walker, as the two plastic bars seemed to encourage my son to walk in a straight line as they were restricted from having their legs wandering.

This Stride to Ride walker can also be turned into a push along ride. The two blue plastic bars can be clipped together to create a seat for your child to sit on - my son used to love pushing himself around on this as the seat is the perfect height from the floor for a little one, which makes it much easier for them to push themselves about. The only downside for a parent is that it makes them MUCH faster, and a close eye is needed or bangs will occur!

Also with this walker is further stimulation - yoiur child can shoot hoops with the hoop that is below the coloured face on the front of the walker - which is a great game for parent and child to play together. This also helps your child with eye to hand co-ordination, and their motor skills. Also there are brightly coloured lights and musical melodies that add that extra edge of fun whilst your child plays. Many a time I found my son dancing pushing the walker along whilst simultaneously trying to bounce along to the music!

Solitary Play

I would recommend supervised play with this toy as there is always the risk of energy if your child is left unattended. There is risk the child can upturn the walker, or fall over the blue plasctic bars. Also the child could push the worker into a piece of furniture and cause damage to the furniture and injury to themselves. The one safe thing of this toy is that there are no small parts to create a choking hazard.

Storing the walker away

It is fairly easy to store this walker away as it is not at all bulky or encumbersome. I found I could quite easily store it in a number of places - under the stairs - in our sons toy corner - in the shed. Yet again, the one thing I would stress is ensure that the place where you store it is not immediately accessible to your child without you being aware of it - to ensure supervised play at all times.

Cleaning

As with all toys little childrens hands are fantastic at causing sticky and messy surfaces. The Stride to Ride Walker is no exception to the rule. However, it is very easy to clean. I simply used a bowl of warm soapy water and used a cloth to wipe it down. If this was not available, then a baby wipe does just as good a job.

Price

We paid £27.99 for this from Toys are us. This is about the average price for this. However, I feel the price will drop as Fisher Price have now released a new model (sounds like a car review!) and it is called Stride to Ride Lion.

As I said earlier on in this review, there are many places that stock the Stride to Ride Walker, so I would advise shopping around. If £27.99 is out of your budget then Ebay or Amazon are good at selling much cheaper ones that may be second hand but in very good condition.

To Conclude

My son had a whale of a time with this walker. It really helped him learn more balance and avoid the sidestep walking that many children do with their newly found feet!! The walker has a good supportive frame that rarely toppled with my child.

Also this walker is great as it grows with your childs capabilities. As it is a walker AND a seated push around toy it equates to buying 2 toys for the price of one. With the extra musical and play features incorporated into it you can't help but see the benefit and value of this toy.

I would give this product a 5/5 from our house, and a definite thumbs up from our son.