My wonderfully generous mother has told us that she wanted to buy our little girls sleeping bags for Christmas. This is a great thing, except we want them to have sleeping bags they can actually go camping in. So I needed to put a bit of thought into it.

Camping is something we used to do a great deal before we had kids. We’ve traveled all over the U.S. to National Parks and camped and backpacked. But that was long ago, it seems. Now that we made it through one mellow and one colicky baby, breastfeeding on demand for years, and many other sleepless nights, we are ready to think about venturing out to go camping this next spring and summer.

So, here are a few of the sleeping bags I was thinking about. There is this classic one from LL Bean, which looks great and very comfy, but is probably more of a sleepover type bag and may not be warm enough for cooler New England nights. It is the most affordable at $39 (it’s the blue one above).

Then I found this one from REI. A warmer, mummy design, but not too mummy so they can move around. It has a built in hood that can be stuffed to be a pillow, and it has a little pocket for stuff. This one is rated to +30 degrees as well. It sells for $59 (it’s the hot pink one above).

Of course, North Face has a bomber looking bag, completely ready for the elements but coming in a $79. It also has no kid-ness to it, if you know what I mean. It is rated to a toasty 20 degrees (it’s the maroon one).

I think we have settled on the REI bag. It will definitely work for both camping, staying at the grandparents, and of course, camp outs in the living room. I’ll let you know in a comment to this post how it turns out.