Playjamas: if I was Oprah, this would be one of my favourite things #SafeSleep

While it’s true that in general I have a somewhat troubling obsession with shopping (or, as Big B puts it: “She has a shopping problem, and I have a credit card problem), there’s something about kids’ pyjamas that put me over the edge.

I like them all – one-piece, two pieces, short-sleeved and long. Plain, patterned, adorned with characters. I don’t discriminate when it comes to jammies.

I remember wearing my PJs for, like, a week as a kid before they were thrown in the wash. Now that I’ve got kids of my own, I have no idea how that’s possible. If mine don’t wake up with pee-dampened bottoms, they don’t want to get dressed before we go down for breakfast and  inevitably dribble milk or wipe their peanut-buttery fingers all over them before I can lurch forward with paper towel in hand.

So when an old university friend sent me a message on LinkedIn asking if I’d heard of Playjamas, a line of playful pyjamas that his wife had recently launched, I was pretty keen. The timing was perfect because I was in the throes of organizing this safe sleep series, and Playjamas are organic. They retail for $38.95 per pair – pretty much on par with other quality organic PJs.

Miss Q & The K Man en route to a PJ party.

THE GOOD

Let’s start with the most important thing about Playjamas – they’re FUN! Like, really, really fun. If your kid has ever spent the better part of the day in PJs, just wait until you put him in these. Kids can be robots, doctors, ballerinas, knights or – my personal favourite – ninjas. Spot-on details, like stethoscopes and heart-shaped pendant necklaces, help give each pair of Playjamas serious cute-factor and will turn your little character into a real character. (I love these PJs so much that I bought a pair as a birthday gift within two weeks of receiving our review Playjamas.)

When it comes to safe sleep, you know I’m all about certified organic fabrics and materials. Playmas is organic through and through – from the root vegetable dyes that are Oeko-Tex certified to the SKAL– and GOTS-certified organic cotton. And they’re not treated with fire-retardant chemicals. All good things.

Name another pair of pyjamas that can incite such imaginative play and I’ll give you a pair of Playjamas (actually, I won’t – but you can win a pair if you keep reading!). But it’s true; when I put Miss Q’s robot Playjamas on, she starts making robotic movements and speaking in a monotone fashion. When The K Man wears his doctor Playjamas, I usually have at least a couple of “needles” administered that day. My kids really do have a lot of fun creating play based around which Playjamas they’re wearing.

If you ever have Pyjama Day at school or go to a pyjama party, as we did last month, your kid is going to look AWESOME.

Playjamas follow “snug-fit” guidelines, important for flame-resistance.

A full, 30-day money-back guarantee or exchange with free shipping. No fine print here.

You can’t put most organic clothes, PJs included, in the dryer. The fibres are usually really sensitive to heat and will go all shrinky-dinky on you. But you can put your Playjamas in there! Just ignore the washing instructions – turn them inside-out, use your cold wash cycle and then pop ’em in the dryer on low heat. Some of the styles might fade a bit faster than they otherwise would (and – fair warning – all root vegetable dye does fade slightly over time), but they won’t shrink and they actually get softer every time.

THE GAFFE

Call me old-fashioned, but I like my daughter to look like a little girl. Yes, of course, she can be a doctor or a ninja and she’s a robot at least once a week around here. But there’s only one really obviously “girl” pair of Playjamas. Could it be that the mompreneur who created the line just had her fourth little boy? It would be great if the doctor jammies were available with a pink or purple “undershirt” in addition to the blue one, and it would be nice to have at least one other really girlie design, like a princess or fairy.

The sizing is super-small. As I write this, Miss Q is 22 months old and wears a size 2 at babyGAP or a 1.5-2 at H+M; she wears size 4 Playjamas very comfortably. The K Man is four years old and wears a size 5 at babyGAP or a 4-6 at H+M; he wears his Playjamas in a size 7. Playjamas’ website suggests going up one size – but I recommend two. There’s a sizing chart where you can check specific measurements.

One of the reasons you need to go up a minimum one full size is the neck hole. Because of snug-fit requirements, the neck holes on kids’ PJs need to be pretty small. However, there’s almost no give to Playjama’s neck hole and it means that I end up yanking open the hole and stretching it out of place to squeeze it over my kids’ melons. (I should add here that they have both always measured in the 50th to 75th percentiles for head circumference  so we’re not talking about kids that look like bobble-heads here.)

THE GEARS

4.5/5

So…where can you buy it?

• Directly from Playjamas