Laundry Fun

I have had these pictures ready to post for a week or two now, but I just haven't been able to come up with any words to go along with the post. So, in fear of never posting this, I am just going to post the dang pictures and get over the fact that its going to be a lame post. Is that ok with everyone?

Ok. Good.

This is Zachariah's new laundry basket. Its pretty much the most adorable laundry basket I have ever seen and Zachariah LOVES it. I mean, absolutely loves it.

Along with being flat out adorable, it has this fabulous handle that you can use to swing over your shoulder and carry the lion down to the laundry room. Fabulous? Yes, yes it is.

The mouth of the lion opens up so you can throw clothes in there. Zachariah LOVES this.

Every time he has dirty clothes he runs over, opens the mouth, throws the clothes in, closes it and says (in a very deep and raspy voice), "Mmmm. Yummy shirt!" (Or shorts, or pants. Insert appropriate clothing item.) So yeah. He talks for the lion. How cute is that?

Anyway. I just wanted to share about the cute laundry basket. We found it at Target for $10 and we are VERY pleased with it. They had a couple other laundry baskets similar to this. I think one was sports related and one was a butterfly or something. But this one is by far the cutest. And it fit his safari themed room so wonderfully, so purchasing "Mr. Lion" was a no brainer for us.

And yes, Zachariah named his laundry basket. :)

Product Review

Let me start this blog post by stating that I love Leap Frog. I really do. We do not own a single Leap Frog product that we don't love. I don't know if we have just happened upon some of their best products, or if they really make everything exceptional... but so far they haven't failed us.

That being said, I guess it is no surprise that we are now the proud owners of, yet again, another fabulous Leap Frog product!


(It was a very rainy day when I took most of these pictures, so please excuse the lack of light. Thanks for your patience and understanding.) :)


This is called the Tag Jr. It is a lot like the Tag reading system, but designed for toddlers. Zachariah received this for Christmas this year and it happens to be one of my favorite gifts!!! It comes with the everything you see in the picture above. The book pal (which is the white and green thingamajig) and a sample book.





Since the Tag Jr only comes with the sample books, any other books you want you need to purchase. Zachariah got The Backyardagins book for Christmas, and then we bought him ABC Animal Orchestra and 123 Dora. They also have Elmo, Cars, Curious George, Pooh and other books too! Eventually we hope to buy him more, but these three are doing just fine for now.




You know whats cool? You can program the book pal to say your kids name. Every time Zachariah turns it on it greets him. It will say something like "Hello, Zachariah!", or "How is my friend, Zachariah?" That one actually freaks me out. But the other greetings are cute. There are about 4 of them.

You can also hook the book pal up to your computer to track your child's progress. It basically tells you what your kid has been looking at the most. But since I am always right there with him while he is "reading" with it, I haven't had a need for that feature. That was mine and Daniel's thing with this. We did NOT want it to teach our son how to read. We want to do that. We were very determined to not use this as a babysitter for our kid, and so far we have done a good job of playing with him while he is using this.

Ok. Stepping off my soap box now. Onto the rest of the post! :)


Once you program your reading pal, you go online and download the books you have purchased, then hover over the pages with the book pal. Whatever you touch with the book pal it will "read" it. Or make music. Or sounds.

The book that Zachariah is reading in that picture is the ABC Animal Orchestra. It is my favorite. There is an animal playing an instrument for each letter of the alphabet. For example... the page he is on has the letter J. The animal is Jaguar and its playing a Jug. The Iguana's are playing Indian Bells. The Elephant is playing the Electric Guitar. Get my drift?

You can put the book pal over anything on the book. If you put it over the letters, it tells you what the letter is and what sound it makes. If you put it over the animal, it tells you what animal it is and what sound it makes. If you put it over the instrument, it tells you what the instrument is called and it makes the appropriate sound. There is just SO much to do with these books!




And on the last page of every book there is a song (or two, or three. Depends on the book). If you put book pal over the alphabet it sings the ABC song. If you put it over the animal playing the instruments, it plays the ABC song in different styles of music. Hip hop, jazz, reggae and a few others. Z really loves that page. He likes to dance to all the different types of music. :)




He also loves to see if anyone is living in the book pal. He will often turn it upside down and say "Hello in there!". Its hilarious. And since it talks to him, I cannot convince him that someone isn't there. Poor kid.




The long and short of it is, I love this product. It is a great educational toy. It can be a tad expensive trying to buy all the books, but I say just buy a couple and put others on a birthday or Christmas list. And I would STRONGLY recommend all three that we have. They are fabulous. :)


Stay tuned tomorrow for another vaccine post!
Happy Thursday!

Cheddar Bunnies

I have recently started buying some of Annie's Homegrown food products. I am a bit paranoid about the ridiculous amount of preservatives that are in just about everything we eat. So I was really happy when I found that Annie's products are healthier, and reasonably priced too!

Zachariah really likes their organic version of Campbell's spaghettios and their Cheddar Bunnies! (We buy those instead of goldfish.) I tried them the other day and they are actually really tasty.

Anyway, I was on the website and found some other products that I really want to try. They have Bunny Grahams, Fruit snacks, all natural mac n cheese, cereals... you get the picture. Actually, how about you just click here to see some of their products.

And in case you wanted to know, I have found them at WalMart. I am sure they are at some other grocery stores too, but I haven't looked elsewhere yet.

That does it for my product review. If you have tried some of Annie's products before, let me know what you think of them!

Water Battle of '09

Ever since the beginning of time, Zachariah has had a hatred for water. He just wont drink it. Every now and then when I trick him into taking a sip of it, he will just let it drool out of his mouth. I really wanted him to drink water in between meals so that he wont get so filled up on milk, but its been a losing battle.

Until I switched cups.
He will drink anything out of these straw cups. He LOVES them. They are cute, cheap, and actually spill proof. Thank you, Nuby!

And I absolutely love watching him drink out of it. The way his cute little cheeks and lips look as he is slurping through the straw. ADORABLE.


*And just FYI... I also put a few drops of lemon juice in the water so that it makes it a bit more appealing. I plan to wean him off of that one drop at a time though. :)

Have a great weekend!

Best.Razor.Ever.

In the market for a kick butt stroller?

Ever since Zachariah has been able to sit up, I have been in the market for an umbrella stroller. (the travel system was getting to be a pain) But quite frankly, I despise them. They remind me of a baby doll stroller. You basically have to walk while squatting to reach the handles. Which would cause some major back problems, which wold cause me to complain for weeks on end. So in order to keep the people around me happy, I wanted to avoid that at all cost. Luckily I came across this uber cool stroller on the Internet. It's still an umbrella stroller, but 10 times better.

Get this: There is a basket underneath to hold diapers and such, there are two cupholder type things big enough to hold water bottles and or sippy cups. There are quite a few pockets/pouches to hold keys, wallets, toys, etc... The stroller is extremely lightweight and the handles aren't really low to the ground! In fact, if you prefer, you can buy the stroller with Adjustable Handles for only $10 more. (which is the one I bought) Oh yeah. I haven't told you the best part about it. It has an adjustable canopy. Thats right. It locks into 542 different positions so that your child can be shaded, no matter what direction the sun is in! (ok, so I may have exaggerated a little, but its pretty close) I bought it in grey, but they also have one in pink and red.

So if you are looking for a freaking awesome umbrella stroller, I suggest going to Target.com and ordering this one or this one with the cool handles. Its a pretty good stroller for a not so bad price. I have definitely got my money's worth out of it after only a month.

Think Outside the BUN

Mr. Cheesy Beefy Melt, I will stop the world and be with you.

Product Endorsement

I am a pretty paranoid person. The thing I am most paranoid about, as a mother ,is SIDS. Ever since we moved Zachariah to his crib (10 weeks old), I have to go check on him 524 times a night to make sure he is still breathing. And then I make Daniel go check on him another 213 times before we go to bed. Every sound that comes from his nursery wakes me up and gets me thinking that something is wrong. Even though I know that his humidifier just made a gurgling sound, I go check on him… again.

Recently I came across the Angelcare Movement and Sound Monitor in my babytalk magazine. At first I thought it was too good to be true. But then I did a little research, and before I knew it, they were mine! Here is the skinny: There is a sensor pad that you put under the mattress of the crib. Then you hook it up to the cute, cloud shaped monitor (aka: nursery unit). It detects all of your baby’s movement, which of course includes breathing. If 20 seconds go by without movement, it will sound an alarm in the cute, cloud shaped parents unit and in the nursery unit. (Just in case you don’t have your unit on, you can still hear the alarm)

Last night was the first time that we used it, and it was wonderful. I only got up to go make sure he was all warm and snuggled under his blanky. I didn’t have to get up 524 times to go check and make sure he was ok. And even if I did feel like checking on him, I don’t have to go over to the crib and hold my hand in front of his face, or over his chest to make sure he is breathing. Conveniently located on the nursery unit, there is a light that flashes every time he moves. So I can stand at the door and see the light flashing and know everything is fine and dandy.

The one concern Daniel and I had about this was that Zachariah would move off the sensor pad and we would get a ton of false alarms. But I tested it by moving him ALL OVER THE CRIB. At times he wasn’t even near the sensor pad and it picked up his breathing. So that was very reassuring.

Anyway. This is great. I wish I had it for the first 6 months of his life. I would have slept a whole heck of a lot better. If you want to read more about it, you can click here for the official website. Or you can click here to read reviews of what some parents think about it. Walmart and Target sell it, but I have only found it online.

Happy shopping everyone!

Baby Einstein

I am in love with Baby Einsteins. They have the most amazing products. And I want all of them. I LOVE their teether books, toys, dishes (even though we don't need most of that yet), and their movies. We have three of the movies and Zachariah loves them. It gives me around 30 min. to fix dinner, fold laundry, or check my blogs. (I usually take the time to do the latter) So yeah. Baby Einstein is amazing. And just for everyone's information, the next movie I am wanting is Baby Neptune. Because it looks so freaking awesome.

That it. I just wanted to express my love for this ingenious company.

Infomercials

Do you hate dusting in those hard to reach areas? You know what I am talking about. Fan blades, blinds, floor boards. Lets be honest here. Who really likes to dust? If you are anything like me dusting doesn’t get done except for once every 4 or 5 months. (Yeah I know, I am a bad housewife)

So we have determined that you hate to dust, right? You better grab a seat, because I have the perfect product for you. What is this wonderful dusting product you ask? Its the handy dandy Swiffer Duster of course! I just dusted our whole living room (fan blades included) in less than 5 min. It was quite amazing. And I actually enjoyed doing it. Shocker I know. Amy Lynn, who doesn’t lift a finger except to turn on the TV, dusted today. The best part about it? It cost less than $10.

Read up on it. Buy it. Fall in love with it.
I know I did.