Our Favorite High Chair

Feeding a baby in our house means feeding them at the table, in the middle of everything, because the alternative is a separate shift and a lonely high chair parked in the corner. We wanted the youngest right in the mix at dinner, but most high chairs are bulky islands that never quite reach the table and turn into crumb-caked plastic traps within a month.

The Stokke Tripp Trapp is the one that finally fit our life. It pulls right up to the table so the baby eats shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the crew, and the seat and footplate adjust in seconds as they grow. Every surface wipes clean after the messiest dinners, but the real reason we chose it is that it converts into a chair our big kids still sit in — so one high chair has genuinely carried us through baby after baby.

It is not cheap, and we looked hard at the twenty-dollar plastic chairs before committing. But when you spread the Stokke Tripp Trapp’s price across this many children and this many years, it stops looking like a splurge and starts looking like the thrifty choice. It is solid wood that does not tip or crack, it adjusts to fit a grown adult, and it still looks like furniture instead of a toy. Buying one chair that lasts a decade beat buying a new plastic seat every couple of years, hands down.