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Every July, a very specific kind of madness sets in: otherwise reasonable people start buying wool coats in ninety-degree heat. That’s the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, which is less a clearance event than a bet on your future self — new fall arrivals marked down now, prices climbing back up the second it ends.

I understand the appeal. I also have a nine-month-old who recently learned to pull himself up on the coffee table and has treated the entire house as a personal jungle gym ever since. So my Anniversary Sale browsing looks less like a fall-coat strategy session and more like a triage list, squeezed in between deadlines: what has he outgrown, what is he about to destroy, and what do I need for myself so that I show up to a work call looking like a person.

Nine months is a weirdly expensive age. The newborn setup — the swaddles, the bassinet, the bouncer he used to nap in — has quietly stopped working. What replaces it is bigger, pricier, and rarely discounted. Which is what makes this particular sale worth the scroll, even if the baby section is buried behind 40 slides of boots (which I will gladly traverse, because mama needs luxury too).

If you want the deep dive on wheels, SheKnows already rounded up 11 rare stroller deals at the Anniversary Sale, and there’s a separate roundup of the best deals under $50 if you’re keeping the damage minimal. What follows is the general list: thirteen things across baby, me, and the house that I’d put in a cart without agonizing over it.

First, the thing nobody tells you about this sale…

The sale runs through Sunday, August 9, and prices go back up August 10. That’s the official deadline. It is not the real one.

The real deadline is stock. The brands worth caring about here — Stokke, Nuna, Le Creuset, Parachute — hold their prices all year. They don’t do Black Friday. They don’t email you a code. So when they show up marked down 25 to 35 percent, the good stuff moves fast, and a startling amount of it is already gone. Bundles from Silvercross, the Joolz Aer2, UPPAbaby Cruz V3, Doona and Cybex Gazelle S sold out before the public sale even opened. 

Every price below was live at the time of writing. But don’t dilly dally because stock changes quickly. 

One more piece of housekeeping: shipping is free with no minimum, and new Nordstrom cardmembers get $60 off a future purchase through August 9. If you were going to spend $300 anyway, that math is worth thirty seconds of attention.

Baby Gear That’s Already On My Floor

We bought this one, and it’s the purchase I’d defend hardest. The Tripp Trapp isn’t a high chair so much as a chair that keeps adjusting until your kid is a teenager, which is a strange thing to say about something currently covered in smashed avocado. Two things matter about this deal: the tray is included, and the tray normally runs an extra $75. Without it you’re feeding a nine-month-old directly off the table, which is a choice.

The honest trade-off: assembly is fussy, the wood scratches, and it is a lot of money for a chair. But it doesn’t look like a piece of plastic playground equipment parked in your kitchen, and after nine months of staring at it, that counts for something.

I’ve pushed a lot of travel strollers around northwest D.C., where the sidewalks are cracked in ways that separate the good ones from the merely lightweight. The Nuna TRVL LX handles it. It’s 14.6 pounds, folds one-handed, and the fold is the actual selling point — you can collapse it while holding a baby, which is the only fold that matters in a parking garage.

$200 off is the steepest discount on this list by dollar amount. It’s also the one I’d expect to disappear first, since the TRVL travel system version already has.

This is the piece of gear I recommend to every friend having a baby, and it earns its keep well past the newborn stage. Ours is still in rotation, now as a place he sits and vigorously bounces himself while I finish an email. No batteries, no cord, no motor. It folds flat, the cover washes, and it converts to a toddler chair.

The trade-off: it’s expensive for a bouncer, and if your baby hates being contained, none of that matters. Buy it knowing your kid.

For Baby

A Nordstrom-exclusive, and the cheapest thing on this list. Designed by a pediatric feeding specialist, and the suction is the whole point: a nine-month-old’s primary hobby is launching a bowl across a room. This is the unglamorous stock-up buy that pays for itself in floor cleaning alone.

Right on phase for the cruising stage. It’s a push walker that converts into a play kitchen and a shopping cart, with a removable panel loaded with songs and lights. Three toys for one price point, which is the only kind of toy math I’m interested in right now.

The underrated pick. ErgoPouch doesn’t have the marketing budget of the big monitor brands, and this isn’t a monitor — it’s the thing that makes sleep portable, which matters enormously once you start traveling with a baby who has opinions about unfamiliar rooms. Under $41, rechargeable, and small enough to live in a diaper bag.

Folds flat, which is the entire argument if you live somewhere with one bathroom and no storage. The temperature plug turns white when the water is too hot, and the newborn insert is included, so it covers the whole stretch from sink baths to a kid who can sit up unassisted.

For Me

Thirty-seven percent off, and the thing I’d buy for myself without a second thought. It’s a Hatch sweatshirt that reads as an actual outfit, which is the entire category I now live in — working from home, on the floor half the day, occasionally required to be on camera.

You already know whether you want this. I’ll only note that it’s a third off, it fits a stroller cup holder, and I have gone entire days forgetting to drink water, so the ridiculous size is a feature.

The splurge in this section, and the one that requires a caveat: $177 for a diaper bag is a lot. But it doesn’t look like a diaper bag, which means it keeps working as a regular bag once the diaper phase ends. If you’re the parent doing daycare drop-off and then walking into a meeting, that’s the case for it.

For the Home

Le Creuset under $100 is the closest thing this sale has to a real anomaly — the brand holds its prices year-round with almost no exceptions. The griddle pan is the practical pick over the Dutch oven: it does pancakes, eggs, grilled cheese and a weeknight steak, and it lives on the stovetop instead of taking up a cabinet.

Parachute is another brand that doesn’t discount. Organic cotton, reversible, and machine washable — the only spec that matters in a house with a baby who is teething and treats every textile as a chew toy.

And if you want one small nice thing: the Viski Meridian Gold-Rimmed Wine Glasses, 2-pack are $36.99, down from $55.99. Two glasses, not eight, which is an honest reflection of how much entertaining is happening around here.

If you’re the one buying the shower gift

I’m past the stage where this is my purchase, but it’s what I’d point a pregnant friend toward, and $174 off an infant car seat is not a discount that comes around often. The PIPA Aire RX weighs 6.2 pounds, which sounds like a spec-sheet detail until you’ve carried a sleeping baby in a car seat across a parking lot. Nuna’s reputation here is built on the install being hard to get wrong, and the bundle includes the Relx base rather than making you buy it separately.

Worth saying plainly: an infant bucket seat has a short life. Most babies outgrow it inside a year. That’s a real argument against spending $476, and a real argument for buying it on sale if you’re going to buy it at all.