LennyLamb LennyPreschool

Linda’s view:

I was very excited to try this carrier, although my babywearing times with Helenka are long gone – nowadays, she only wants to be worn when she wants to cuddle for a short time or is jealous about her baby brother being worn. But we could not miss this opportunity to test this huuuuge carrier. LennyLamb is no start-up company in the babywearing world and it seems that this time, they wanted to fulfill their customers’ wishes as well as they could. The detachable hood is something every parent appreciates, mainly during summer, the system of adjusting of the width of the back panel with marks according to age of the wearie is intuitive and the short padding of the shoulder straps enables to position the wearie very high when wearing on the back – assuming most people wear big children on the back. We tried the carrier in front with Helenka but as you can see in the photos, it was nothing worth repeating for us. 😀 

Aside from the dimensions of the huge back panel, I was surprised how short the waist belt was – very thin mums will be excited; however, there is no need for the not-that-thin ones to be worried. The solution of this waist belt dilemma is simple – LennyLambd adds an extender to the waist belt. After my second pregnancy, I am far from the XS/S size so I used the extender – and I must say, it is great! I tried this smart little gadget for the first time, having the exact opposite problem with the LennyLamb waist belts in past (for example in LennyUp carrier) that they were too long for me. The extender is exactly that one thing you did not know you needed until you tried it. All thumbs up! 

Helenka measures 98 cm, weights 3,5 kg and wears size 104 having quite long legs. Adjusting the waist belt to 3,5 years (her actual age) was not wide enough – 4 years was adequate, so we still had one mark left to grow to. 

We could not help but to compare this carrier with Kavka Multi-Age Plus, one of the biggest and in our opinion one of the best toddler carriers on the Czech market. Both manufacturers are Polish and both carriers aspire to be big enough for preschoolers. 

As I mentioned, the waist belt is shorter in LennyPreschool and also it is wider and surprisingly thinner. It is hard and the only example I can think of as a comparison in this aspect, are the Slovakian Moyo carriers. The pocket in the middler of the waist belt is a peculiar detail – in case of Preschool I cannot imagine anyone really using it, under the bum of a 10-25kg child. LennyUpgrade has the same pocket, but when carrying a smaller child I can imagine that it can be of real use. 

Comparison of the waist belts of LennyPreschool and Kavky Multi-Age Plus. 

All the dimensions of the back panel of Preschool are bigger. In the lower part, it has a preformed “pocket”, similar to Zumbucca for example – so although it might not seem that big at the first sight, there is a lot of fabric in this area. The width of the back panel is 53 cm, but if you count in the pocket, the actual width is 58 cm. In case of Kavka, it is 51 cm.

The shape of the Kavka Plus back panel is different (almost “hourglass” shaped) – therefore it fits smaller children than LennyLamb because it “embraces” their body better. However, the minimum width of the back panel of both carriers is the same, 24 cm. 

The shoulder straps of both carriers are ergonomically banana shaped, but are shorter in LennyLamb and the chest buckle is not atteched on the rails like in Kavka. In both carriers, there are buckles in the lower part of the back panel that enable to wear them crossed. However, I did not try to wear the carrier like this and I do not think that the manufacturer even intended the carrier to be worn with the shoulder straps crossed. Honestly, it does not really make sense in case of banana shaped shoulder straps that should make the non-crossed wearing as comfortable as if you worn the straps crossed. 

The hood is detachable in both carriers – there are loops with studs in LennyLamb and studs only in Kavka; there is no gap between the back panel and the hood in case of both carriers. 

Buckle on the shoulder straps enabling wearing them crossed. 

Overall, I think the carrier is very well constructed and I would definitely recommend it to parents with big children and children that grow fast and have long legs. I really have nothing to reproach. In accordance with the recommendation of the manufacturer, I would not recommend to wear children younger than one year in this carrier – it is really huge and it would not support the smaller children very well (not all the children already walk in 1 year of age). 

Lenka’s view: 

There is no need to introduce the Polish babywearing giant LennyLamb. We have tested and tried their carriers and wraps on multiple occasions – you can find the review of the older version of the LL adjustable carrier LennyUp and several wraps here; also an article about Wrap Tai here and even a truly prehistorical review of LennyUp carrier which we wrote even before we actually started to write this blog. Also, I owe you a review of the new versions of the LL carriers – LennyUpgrade, Toddler and Wrap Tai Toddler (coming soon). You can find the “historical introduction” in the first article I mentioned above so for now, I will not repeat myself. 😉 

Linda already described the carrier in detail, so she basically did more than a half of the work for me. 😀 I would like to summarize what I liked about the older and smaller versions of the LennyLamb carriers, what I disliked about them, what is different in LennyPreschool and I will also mention some comments and impressions from the testing of the carrier in our regional babywearing group. Of course, I will share my feelings from my own testing – and that we REALLY put the carrier to a test, despite me being overwhelmingly pregnant and my 3-years-old weighting almost 14 kg! I carried Emilka in LennyPreschool for about 45 minutes on my back (and I apologize for not testing the carrier in front because it is not really technically possible for me at the moment, as you can probably guess from the photos). 

• waist belt: all the LennyLamb carriers had very soft waist belts so far, even the Toddler model. I have mentioned multiple times that I prefer hard waist belts in toddler carriers (or that I generally prefer hard waist belts – but as the wearie gets heavier, the more I appreciate the hard padding of the waist belt). In this case, I think the manufacturer was very wise to change their years-long concept preferred by their customers and chose to use a hard waist belt in LennyPreschool. It is thin (nothing like Tula, for example; I would rather compare it to Rischino Flexi XXL), adequately wide and similarly to other new models of LL carriers its padded part is short enough even for very thin wearers (the length of the waist belt in older versions of LL carriers used to be quite an issue due to their length – the were too long even for me,  with my “usual” size 38). Here, I do not really share Linda’s excitement – the ends of the padded part of the waist belt are still quite wide (see the comparison of the LennyPreschool’s and Kavka’s waist belts – in this place, in Kavka the waist belt is substantially narrower) and therefore this part of the waist belt might be uncomfortable for thin wearers – which several thin mums from our babywearing group confirmed after testing this carrier. On the other hand, the extender is an ingenious little thing – I already encountered it in LennyUpgrade last autumn, but by that time, being size 38, I wore Emilka only over a jacket and therefore, I was not able to appreciate it enough. However, now being 8 months pregnant the waist belts in all the carriers basically “dig” in between my breasts and my belly – using the extender made the wearing much more comfortable for me. 

• adjusting of the back panel: the system of adjusting of the width of the back panel is the same in all the adjustable LL carriers – a strap + Velcro on the inside of the waist belt, marked with the age of the wearie (which is not an ideal choice – height/size would be better in my opinion). I adjusted the carrier to 3,5 years for Emilka – which is not her actual age yet, neither she measures as an average 3,5-years-old – with her 92 cm she is actually smaller that a lot of 2-years-olds. As to the vertical adjusting, with LennyPreschool the manufacturer moved “back to the roots” – while the back panel in LennyUpgrade is adjusted by a sophisticated system of wrap straps and buttons, in LennyPreschool, it is adjusted by straps and buckles, just as in the old adjustable LennyUp carrier (in which about everything adjustable was adjusted by straps and buckles which was not very aesthetic in my eyes). The only difference is that there is no adjusting behind the wearie’s neck – of course, you do not need that with a preschooler, BUT! The manufacturer announced the carrier being designed specifically for parents with disabled children. I would be very, very careful about this recommendation, because the back panel is very big and wide mainly in the upper part and considering many disabled children are hypotonic, I do not think that this carrier would provide enough support for them. 

• the shoulder straps are relatively short (or their padded part is short) – I did not measure them, regrettably, but I think they are the same as in LennyUpgrade and Toddler I tried last autumn (if they are not, could someone correct me?). The possibility to wear the banana shaped shoulder straps crossed is something I do not really consider an advantage. Moreover in LennyPreschool there are only one-directional buckles and therefore manipulation with the shoulder straps if you want to buckle them up crossed is not comfortable at all. My overall impression is that the manufacturer chose to put the buckle on the shoulder straps just so that they could say that wearing shoulder straps crossed is possible. Also, the chest buckle is not detachable – now my “Kavka-like-chest-buckle-on-rails” spoiled self is talking, this is basically the only thing I have to reproach about LL LennyPreschool. The chest buckle is attached as usual in the majority of carriers, “strap over strap”, which is something that is quite uncomfortable for me when wearing on my back. It is probably the same issue as in case of the extender – a thing you did not know you were missing until you tried it. 😉 

• the hood, same as in all the new models of LL carriers, is attached on loops on the inside of the back panel, quite deep inside of it (just as in Kavka Handy, for example) – it does not only look good, it also prevents the gap between the hood and the back panel that drove me mad in case of LennyUp. The pocket in the middle of the waist belt is something I consider constant in LennyLamb carriers which is more ridiculous than useful in my point of view (sorry). However, I must appreciate that it is fastened by magnets and therefore there is no risk of the wrap being damaged by a Velcro. 

• and last but not least, the back panel: it is truly enormous and I probably do not know about any other non-custom made carrier as big as this one (maybe only the adjustable VeKa could be comparable but I am not really sure – I would have to compare the carriers side by side). The shaped back panel with the preformed “pocket” in its lower part is great and enables a perfect ergonomic position even of a big wearie, with her/his knees above the bum (this was something that really bothered me in LennyUpgrade in which the knees were virtually in horizontal line with the bum in case of bigger wearies). Not the case of LennyPreschool – the position looks great even in the biggest wearies that fit into the carrier. And what about the actual size range? The manufacturer recommends the carrier for children “from 1 to 6 years of age” which is a very wide range, and also a very vague range. While I am okay with the maximum recommended age (even a 122cm daughter of one of the testers in our regional babywearing group fit into the carrier – hats off to Preschool), I cannot agree with the minimum recommended age of 1 year. Emilka measured hardly 74 cm when she was 1 year old and I could probably put 2 and a half Emilkas in this carrier by that time without much effort. At one of our babywearing meet-ups we tried the carrier with smaller children – in our opinion the smallest “wearable” size in LennyPreschool is 86; it was obviously too big for children of size 80. Not that the problem was the width of the back panel in its lower part, but its width in its upper-most part. For children smaller than size 86, the back panel is too loose here. If you compare the shape of the back panel of LennyPreschool and Kavka Multi-Age Plus, you can see that in case of Kavka, the back panel is substantially narrower in this part and therefore Kavka can fit very well smaller children of size 80, in contrast to LennyPreschool. Moreover, I would not recommend this carrier to wearers with very narrow shoulders – as the back panel is wide in its upper part, also the shoulder straps are very wide apart and will not fit very thin wearers. 

LennyPreschool fit me, a not-at-all-thin wearer, and Emilka measuring 92 cm, perfectly. I was able to position her very high without much effort, the waist belt with the extender felt very comfortable and we enjoyed the testing very much. Bottom line – except for the absence of the rail-attached chest buckle, LennyPreschool matches my all-time number one carrier when it comes to comfort of wearing, which is (not surprisingly) Kavka Multi-Age Plus. It is certainly in my top 3 of extra-huge toddler carriers I would not hesitate to recommend to other wearers any time!

Hereby we want to thank the satkomanie.cz e-shop for lending us the carrier for testing. If you wish to try or purchase this carrier, just look at their website!