NEWBURY PARK : Parents Enjoy 1-Stop Shopping at Baby Expo

Anna Schneider, with her two toddlers in tow, was in search of information about homeopathic child care. She found it.

Bob Buettner watched over his new baby girl while his wife, Lori, examined hand-crafted children’s furniture. She, too, found something she liked.

For scores of parents, the second annual Baby Expo in Newbury Park on Saturday proved a virtual clearinghouse of child-care information, baby products, parenting services and more.

Visitors footed a $1 entrance fee to stroll through a maze of 80 vendor booths at the Borchard Community Center. Vendors expounded the virtues of environment-friendly diapers and offered prenatal massage demonstrations and information on adoption and foster care. And the products: toys, car seats, photography, clothes, even the Over the Shoulder Baby Holder--a lengthy, padded cloth meant to drape around the parent and hold a child securely in a variety of positions.

Providing parents easy access to a plethora of baby products and information is the whole idea behind the Baby Expo, said co-organizer Patti Deluca-Ricketts. The Conejo Recreation and Park District coordinator organized the event along with her friend Robin Stidham, a Borchard Community Center advisory board member.

The idea for the expo was born when Deluca-Ricketts and Stidham each was pregnant with her first child.

“We were both new moms and discovered there was nothing available to us in the area where we could easily find information without calling all over the place,” Deluca-Ricketts said. “Here, we have all this in one spot. It’s like one-stop shopping.”

While not necessarily looking for the latest in potty-training methodology, several parents, like Buettner, said they came out of simple curiosity.

“Just the idea of it being baby-related was enough for us to make the trip,” said Buettner, of Moorpark. Three-month-old Ariel Christine Buettner, the family’s first child, tossed in her stroller as dad tried to keep her blanket pulled up high to thwart the cool breeze. “Parents are always on the lookout for something new.”