Tiny Love Symphony In Motion Mobile with Remote Review

Although the strange looks put me off this mobile at first sight, after opening the box and looking at it from a baby's point of view, it began to grow on me right away. The view from below is everything the child development experts tell you a new baby likes to look at - black and white, high contrast patterns, brightly colored shapes with faces on them, and everything spins independently. Not only is the view best from below, but the visuals hang at a slight angle to better face the baby.

The mobile plays three different pieces of music, each with a specific purpose. The selections were already familiar to me as a pianist, but most people with any degree of cultural literacy will recognize the tunes. The Bach Prelude in C major from the Well Tempered Clavier is for soothing the baby to sleep, the Beethoven 2nd Movement from the Piano Sonata in E minor is for stimulating baby to activity, and the Mozart Andante Grazioso from Piano Sonata K 331 in A major is for cognitive development. The mobile will play one song at a time, each lasting fifteen minutes, or a medley of all three songs for fifteen minutes. The volume has two settings, which I would call Soft and Medium.

The brochure also explains how the mobile stimulates your child's brain at each phase of development from one to six months old. It claims teaching such infant academics as fine motor development for the eye and neck muscles, object permanence, language skills, spatial relationships, cause and effect, as well as a rather reaching mention of EQ (because the mobile helps baby learn to self-soothe). If any mobile is capable of cultivating a baby's mind in this way, the Tiny Love Symphony InMotion mobiles are the only ones with enough thoughtful attention to detail to achieve such ambitious goals. 

From the moment my baby focused her bleary, slate-colored eyes on the colorful shapes and tried to track their rotation above her, I knew this was a true winner. At first, I was concerned about so much going on in the air over her head; I thought she might be overstimulated, but this never seemed to be a problem. By the time she was old enough to be social, about two months, she would greet each shape with a smile and a coo as it descended toward her. Soon she was waving her hands in the air at them, then following one shape for its entire rotation for awhile before watching another one. She loved the odd-looking, beady-eyed shapes so much that as soon as she was able she was grabbing them and putting them in her mouth. After that we had to say goodbye to the funny shapes, per the brochure's instructions, because it isn't safe to leave a mobile above a baby who is able to reach it. This happened right at six months, just as the Tiny Love literature predicted. The mobile section is detachable from the music box, which can remain in the crib for as long as you like - or until it breaks. The music is not tinny or chirpy in tone at all, two huge problems I have with most baby music-makers. For an electronic device, it sounds very much like a high-quality music box with a rich tone.

The mobile definitely snacks on batteries as if they are Cheetos. They don't die with dignity either, but make the mobile run more and more sluggishly and the music grind to a moaning stop. I recommend rechargeable batteries. 

This toy is one of the few things my baby grew out of in six months that I would use again. A mobile is one of the only toys which is truly worth offering to a very young infant, and one with so much commitment to what is most entertaining and educational for a baby rather than pleasant or nostalgic to the parent is definitely a winner.