Mom In Motion

Everyday Everywhere Stroller

• What: B.O.B. Motion stroller
• When: 8 weeks to 65 lbs
• Why: Compact yet versatile
• Where: Secondhand

Lots of people buy a B.O.B. Revolution stroller, but not being a jogger myself, I’ve never understood why. It works great as a stroller at your house, but the size makes it painful to take with you on anything but walks. The huge, bulky folded stroller becomes hard to handle without two (or more) hands and hard to put back together once you do manage to squish it into your car with you. The extra length makes it difficult to take into stores. Getting in the door proves tricky (I’m not short by any means and I couldn’t reach or hold most doors open from the back of the stroller.) but managing tight aisles in the city proved nearly impossible. You could buy an attachment for an infant car seat, but that cost extra and the stroller doesn’t start cheap.

Then I saw the B.O.B. Motion on display in a store in my favorite color. I didn’t succumb immediately. Because it was a brand new model, I couldn’t get one secondhand, which the strategy I rely on to avoid extra costs. And we already owned two or three or more strollers at that point. I did test drive it in the store to examine it for my favorite stroller features, and it passed.

As a result, I didn’t stop thinking about it. I haunted online ads sporadically to see if any came up, but it seemed everyone liked what they got. I finally scored one after scouring the ads of three cities within one month. I brought it home, booted my previous car stroller, and never looked back.

The Motion is not approved for jogging, so if that’s what you need, stick with the Revolution. Otherwise, the Motion has smaller wheels than the Revolution, which means it takes up less space and maneuvers easier. It also has two (tiny in comparison) front wheels to the Revolution’s one.

I can fit the entire stroller with wheels attached in the cargo space behind the third row of my Mazda 5, which is not a huge vehicle, and an even smaller space. While the Mazda can accommodate more strollers than my Beetle, I had to take the wheels off several umbrella strollers to get them in there, which gives you an idea of the amount of space I work with.

The Motion folds in an easy two step process that I could manage with one hand. Better yet, I could release the latch, remove my infant, and grab the handle, and it unfolded and locked into the open position with no other help from me. I pulled it straight from the trunk into stroller mode and plopped my kid inside.

The air-filled wheels can handle any terrain, and the front wheels lock into position if you need that kind of thing. The canopy covers everything and keeps out both wind and rain, but still has the peekaboo window so I can see what’s happening in there.

The handlebar adjusts for people of varying height, which comes in handy when your two or four year old wants to push the baby. And the seat reclines fully and quickly with a mechanism that’s intuitive to use.

The foot brakes are easy to find. The only downside in my months of research and stroller stalking? The storage is subpar. You can get a preschooler’s lunchbox in it if you come at it from the side. But the curved bar in the back prevented much access from that angle, and the space itself isn’t huge. It has extra storage in the zippered pocket on the back, and you can buy an accessory organizer. But I added a Toogli hook and was good to go. Unlike some of my other strollers, the Motion is extremely stable even loaded down.

I also added a Joovy Bumprider board to stretch the kid capacity to one sitting and one standing. With those additions, the B.O.B. Motion is the closest I’ve come to my dream stroller.

You can get car seat adapters that click in if that’s important to you (but be careful – one set has a Britax car seat recall). The stroller can take you from birth (well, eight weeks officially, though I’m not sure what the difference between a newborn and an eight week old is) to 65 pounds. My six year old weighs 50 lbs sopping wet, if that helps. He would happily ride in it if I’d let him, but his feet would drag the ground if he didn’t rest them on the frame.

Of course, since I love it so much, B.O.B. no longer produces the Motion stroller. For complete specifications on it, check out R.E.I. or Albee Baby instead. If you want similar features, you can try the Baby Jogger City Mini or Britax B-Agile. Both have three wheels, either plastic or rubber, and similar price tags.