Harnessing the love - a giveaway!!!

I’m not one of those “I will never” moms. Bob and I are both pretty open to most things. My son has tasted (and LOVED) his share of sweets. He does watch TV – mainly Disney. I am a big fan of Handy Manny. Bob likes the Higgly Town Heroes and Little Elvis likes Ooh and Aah, the monkeys.

Little Elvis also wears a harness. Before I became pregnant, I worked in news. After covering some pretty heinous things, a harness was never out of the question, especially once our curious little guy began toddling everywhere and anywhere.

When he was about 6-months-old, we saw a woman walking behind a little boy wearing a monkey backpack. She was holding the tail of the backpack. We both thought it was cute and I set about looking for one.

We found it very easily – at Target and Wal-Mart. And at less than $10, we didn’t even have to spend days searching on craigslist for it. We picked out the puppy version of the Gold Bug Harness Buddy, and gave it to Little Elvis for his first birthday.

I fully expected to receive jeers and taunts when we first slipped the backpack on, but we didn’t.

Instead we received giggles, comments on the cuteness of both our son and the harness, and questions about where we purchased it. We use our harness at least once a week, and no one has been openly hostile. I think it's because the harness is just so cute.

It took us a while to get completely used to the harness. We’ve discovered that the side hook for the tail works much better than the hook in the bottom center of the backpack.

And we realized it was best to wait until he was fairly steady on his feet before trying to stop him with the harness. Those first few weeks, we just tried to keep up with our little toddler.

Now that he's more steady on his feet, we can stop him with the harness. Although, this usually causes him to sit on the floor and whine.

The harness is a great way to help us stay together. He can't venture too far from us, but feels like he has more freedom.

The Gold Bug Harness has been great for us, but as LeVar Burton says, “Don’t take my word for it…”

Gold Bug has agreed to give away one of its super-adorable harnesses to one of my lucky readers.

The options include lamb, frog, pig, horse, panda, koala, bunny, cow, unicorn, pink poodle, giraffe, lion, monkey and dog.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling me which harness you would like, along with an email address.

If you want to comment, but don’t need a harness, feel free to. I will leave your name out of the drawing.

**The contest is now over.**

The drawing will take place on Wednesday morning.