Toddler essentials for the second year

Posted: June 17, 2025 Updated: June 20, 2025

This post of toddler essentials is much more for my mum friends than my gluten free following. But hey! Lots of you are parents or parents to be as well, which is why I’ve got a bit of content around that.

• The glucose tolerance test when you’re gluten free
• Baby essentials for the first year

Maybe no one will read this article, but if we have a second child I’ll be coming back to it. It is amazing how quickly time flies and also how many little things you forget after a few months or a year. Like the weird ways they used to pronounce a word, or their attempts to mimic a dance move.

In this article I’ll include links (some of which will be affiliate) to help you find what you need. All of the products have been used by our family and I genuinely consider them essentials and I’ll explain why.

IKEA plates and cutlery

Probably the best investment in your kid under $5. IKEA sells kids plates, bowls, cups and cutlery in big sets of six colours. We bought the plates, bowls and cutlery (we already had other cups at home).

They are really sturdy, dishwasher safe and just… good. And cheap! Each set is just $2 (June 2025). That’s $2 for six plates, $2 for six bowls, $2 for six cutlery sets (so $2 for 18 pieces).

Straight after buying I dropped off two full sets to my parents house. My daughter is there twice a week and we have dinner there once a week. I gave them my least favourite colours of the set, yellow and pink – now I barely have to see them.

A reusable “coffee” cup

The Keep Cup I got for my daughter on her first birthday was her favourite gift. She immediately picked it up and started pretending to drink from it.

At first I was I kind of stunned. Then I realised, she’s with me all the time and I always use my Keep Cup. Even more so, when she was crawling I was using it at home to keep my coffee safe from spills.

I bought her an espresso sized Keep Cup brand cup because I knew I could trust the quality. We’ve used it as a container at home for drinking milk, and taken it on outings to use for babycinos.

Given so many cafes automatically make a babycino in a takeaway cup, it’s a nice way to make that treat a little more sustainable.

Alternatives to expensive toddler shoes

I must admit, the first time time I saw Duckie shoes advertised I thought to myself “I bet these are readily available cheaper on Amazon.” And they are!

And even cheaper still if you buy off Temu – but we don’t use that app in our house.

We’ve bought six pairs of these toddler shoes, across three different sizes as she’s grown. They’re machine washable, easy to take on and off and come in a range of colours.

When our daughter was about 20 months I actually sat her down at my laptop and let her pick the colours (she chose green and a pink/purple patterned one). Currently her favourite are black as they look like my sneakers.

The price of the ones you’ll see all over Facebook ads are an eye watering $45 a pair, I’ve paid less than half that each time.

A water bottle you can actually take apart to clean

Do you have a kid? Do they have a straw water bottle? Can you get to every inch of it, or are there parts you can’t access?

This is the problem with the very popular B-Box straw bottles. I’ve seen so many photos of people cutting open the straw to reveal mould inside the valves.

So be sure you buy a bottle that is easy to clean and better yet, you can readily replace the straw segment.

We’ve been using this Thermos brand kids bottle and we love it. The plastic straw detaches from the silicone mouthpiece and the whole mouthpiece comes out of the lid.

I use a long thin bottle brush to clean it and disinfect it once a week.

We’ve also found some replacement straws that, while aren’t as good as the original, are very good and accessible in price.

The Thermos ones can be expensive depending on the pattern you get, so scroll through as it varies a lot, $17 – $40. Ours has a few dents and more than a few bite marks but that hasn’t impacted it’s performance at all.

A compact learning tower / toddler tower

Not everyone has the luxury of space in their kitchen and the kitchen for our two bedroom home is small. It’s a beautiful kitchen with great appliances but there is very little space there or the rest of the house.

I really wanted to buy a learning tower for our daughter and I spent months agonising and checking measurements. Most are huge, too big for a small place with large footprints on the floor and a height that matches the bench meaning it can’t be tucked away.

I did look at some folding learning towers but learned through reviews that they required tedious locking and unlocking every time.

Finally I found one learning tower that sits at a height of 85cm which is comfortably under the standard bench height of kitchens in Australia (90cm). I measured it up our kitchen and put in my order.

It has been great, we had a space in our kitchen for two kitchen stools so we instead moved one out and put the toddler tower in. When it’s not in use it’s tucked away under the bench. The tower is light enough for our daughter to pull it out herself and climb up.

I must have really bragged about it to my friend because a few months later she asked me for the link to get one for her growing girl.

“Magic” colouring books

Water activated colouring books are so handy, for so many reasons. They are compact, reusable, mess free and engaging. We’ve been keeping one in our nappy bag for a few months now, it’s really handy for cafes and restaurants where things are getting a bit restless.

There’s two main kinds of these books, one which is water activated (reusable) and the other that activates with special marker (not reusable).

I got mine off Amazon and the resusable one has been really sturdy, it also has a holder for the “pen” to prevent any leakages. But I’ve also seen products at Kmart that use a similar technology for a similar price.

Toy library membership

I put this in the baby essentials article as well but it’s worth repeating, toy library memberships are great! You can hire toys and keep them just until they become unbearably annoying then swap them out for the next thing.

There have been items we thought would be a hit and were an absolute dud. We’ve been able to borrow items we don’t really have space for but could accomodate for a few weeks.

It’s great to see our kid not miss out on those big, expensive items, but also not to contribute to waste when she outgrows them or loses interest.

A travel stroller / pram

I can’t believe that I nearly forgot this one! I was using our travel stroller just a few days before planning to publish this article.

Ours is low-cost Britax model we bought off Amazon called Safe and Sound (painfully when it went back to full price after being on sale for two weeks). But, still cheaper than buying from Baby Bunting – though basically everywhere is.

We bought ours just before our holiday up to Brisbane for a week. Our daughter was just under 18 months so we needed a lie-flat option as well as something that could go on board as cabin baggage.

My friends have travel prams / compact prams as well and it’s a real mix. A few have high end models that cost close to $1,000. By comparison our Britax one above was $129. A mid way option would be the Karion, I saw ads for it recently and it comes with a backpack style carry bag. If it’s comfortable it could be a game changer, you can buy the Karion travel pram from Amazon.

Of course there’s a variance in quality, ours doesn’t have amazing steering but then, it doesn’t have to? For us it’s not an every day item, it’s just for trips where we don’t have much space or days when we need a more compact option.

Day to day we’re still using the pram we bought when our daughter was born.

That’s it! That’s my thoughts on what have been our essential items over the last year. Do you have an essential item you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments!