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U by Kotex Kick Off #KotexMom

Posted by html404 on June 11, 2012
in Girl Stuff, Parenting, Personal Care Products

As a mom of four daughters there is a lot to talk about concerning the passage of womanhood. It’s funny because my mom never really had “the talk” with me about the “birds and the bees” she gave me a book that our community health nurse provided parents and teens. Yet at the same time she has asked me why I didn’t ask her certain things when she finds out there were things I really didn’t know. I think there was a gap between the book she gave me, health education and the bits I picked up from friends. This has helped me as a mother because I never wanted my girls to learn stuff from other people. I wanted them to hear the truth from me so I answered any questions with as little or as much information they needed for their age at the time they asked the questions and provided them with more as they got older. It has really helped my two older girls. I think my third daughter asks her older sisters questions more than she does me, but they always try to defer her to me as they know and understand the information should come from me. So far we haven’t talked too much to my 6 year old about a girl’s monthly cycle nor has she asked many questions. I am assuming she will pick up some things just by living with me and her three older sisters, but other things I will probably have to talk to her about.

I desire to have open and direct conversations with all of my children about the facts of life. I want them to be able to come to me with anything. For those of you desiring the same thing, U by Kotex is a great resource that I will be talking about in the coming months.

U by Kotex Ambassador Program Kick Off

I was recently chosen to participate in the U by Kotex Ambassador Campaign, which I consider a great privilege. One resource is Aimee Teegarden Gets Real Video by Kotex & Nickelodeon ParentsConnect that launched this month. After watching it I can say that I have really tried to be like Aimee’s mom. My girls feel like they can talk to me about anything (just asked them to confirm! ;))

When the girls were little I found myself nervous about talking about the subject of menstruation, which is a gateway to the sex talk too. But I found it easier to answer questions as they naturally occurred or to simply talk about topics as they found their way into our conversations rather than staging the whole thing.

I have already had numerous talks with my two older girls and we continue to talk as issues come up. One issue that seems to be lacking right now is them keeping track of their cycle, which I think is an important habit to get into. U by Kotex has a period tracker/planner that might help:

With my two younger daughters it hasn’t been as nerve wracking because I have done it before, but they are different and receive information differently so the key is to explain things in a way that they will retain and understand it for when their periods do start. That’s why I am interested in finding new resources.

I like the Kotex brand and have used their pads, but was not even aware of U by Kotex until I received the opportunity to apply for an Ambassadorship. I am hoping to learn some new ways to discuss menstruation with my younger girls as well as find new resources for my older girls. The U by Kotex website has videos, articles, Q&As (including a place to post questions), resources, coupons, period planners and of course, products just for our young girls – they can even design their own pad!

Teaching our daughters about menstruation shouldn’t be stressful but as natural as the sun rising and setting.

To learn more about U by Kotex:

Vist their website: www.ubykotex.com
Connect on Twitter
Fan them on Facebook

“I wrote this review while participating in a Brand Ambassador Campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of U by Kotex Tween and received products to facilitate my post and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.”

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EasyTwist Review

Posted by html404 on June 8, 2012
in Personal Care Products, Reviews

There are seven out of ten of us in our family who wear glasses. Our second oldest, “B”, had a lazy eye and got her first pair of glasses at the age of four. She has been by far the most responsible with her glasses out of our five children…for some reason. We have tried the mall kind of glasses and they do not hold up as well as the ones we have got at our eye doctor’s office. I cannot remember the name of them, but they are special frames they offer for kids and they are pricey but worth it in the end.

One of our son’s, Jag, broke his glasses recently and I decided to try something new. EasyTwist from Aspex Eyewear are an all new fun brand that sells flexible glasses for kids. (They have glasses for adults as well.)

They are made from Trilaston a metal developed by Aspex. This metal is known for it’s elasticity and ability to recover the orginial shape of the glasses. I love that they are nickel/titanium free. As a mom I want the best for my child, yet want something that will last. These frames are free of nickel and are hypoallergenic so they shouldn’t cause your child any skin reactions. So far my son has had no reaction.

Typical glasses will eventually lose their flexibility, these frames should not – we haven’t had them long enough to verify this yet. EasyTwist can tolerate stress, shock, and temperate changes! These glasses also retain their shine and luster.

We love these frames! Aspex sent us out a pair for my one son and he just loves them. He thought that they were very comfortable and he loved the cool design on them! After testing these we found that these glasses really seem to be everything that they claim to be. With the EasyTwist frames we don’t have to worry about them easily breaking if my son accidentally bent them a little out of shape – which is a huge bonus.

These frames get two thumbs up from us and if you have a child needing new eyewear we suggest that you check them out. For styles, prices and colors visit this link.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Our Critters – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on June 6, 2012
in Animals, Farm Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

Here are our growing farm critters…

All photos are property of my daughter RJ.

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Stolen Bunny?

Posted by html404 on June 4, 2012
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

It has been a fairly uneventful week. I took an unexpected break from blogging due to life just happening, but so all of you know I will only be blogging 2-3x per week for the summer – probably Monday, Wednesday and Friday OR Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday some weeks. There’s just too many other things on my plate right now.

The one bit of excitement we did have – besides my daughter’s birthday in which we had a cook out – was Luna, our black and white bunny, went missing. Saturday morning we discovered her gone, plus some sheet metal that was outside the barn was gone as well. This led us to count the chickens and we discovered two of them missing! We ended up calling the police because we felt violated having things stolen, not to mention the fact having had someone on our property. 🙁 The dispatcher was like, “Livestock too?” The policeman who came out was just as baffled as we were, but talked to our neighbors and said he’d file a report in case other thefts in the area had occurred, just in case any of them ended up being related somehow. He did think it was probably local.

Photo courtesy of my daughter.

The funny thing is shortly after the policeman left Luna came hopping across the road and into our field where some of the children were doing their chores. Weird. We didn’t think the bunny had escaped because of the way the cage was so bent and surely the bunny could not have bent up its cage door. However, the bunny went missing again Saturday night even after we moved the bunnies up closer to the house. Yesterday the children spotted her in the corn field behind our house. We are not allowed in the corn field due to the agreement with our landlords and the farmer renting the field, so the children made a trap with apples to lure Luna home. Thankfully she fell for it and they caught her again. We are still very confused by it all and probably will never know what really happened.

It made us wonder about our current location since our property is very accessible and in plain site of a major road, even though we are rural – the city police would not even come out, we had to go through the county sheriff’s department. All of this has made us feel unsafe. Not that we want to move, but if we found something in this area off the main “drag” we probably would consider it.

How about you, ever had anything stolen? Feel free to share in the comments below.

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Band-Aid Magic Vision App

Posted by html404 on May 25, 2012
in Techie Stuff, Technology/Electronics

It always amazes me that characters, TV shows and movies that I watched as a kid are usually loved by my children too. From Spider-Man and McGyver to Sesame Street and the Muppets. I always loved Kermit the Frog. How about you? Speaking of the Muppets we tried a new app this week, Band-Aid Magic Vision. This is an app to use on your iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPad2 or iPad3. It as a tool to cheer up your child when they get an owie. If you like Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and the rest of the Muppets, you and your child will enjoy this app.

All you do is take the Muppets Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages or the box and scan it with your Apple device and in a “magical” sparkle the Muppet characters come to life. Your child will experience Kermit the Frog swinging while playing the banjo and singing “The Rainbow Connection” song (loved that song as a kid and still love it!). My little people 6 and under just smiled while watching Kermit. My 21 month old especially liked it and his grin was extra bright with the music and song – he loves music of all kinds! If you tilt your device, Kermit will swing back and forth even more! Fun!

Next your child will experience Miss Piggy in all her self-glory on the red carpet. The app allows children to take pictures, which is what Miss Piggy loves – attention! You can also take pictures of the other characters too by the push of the on-screen camera button – don’t make the same mistake I did and use the real camera button or you’ll close out the app! Yeah one of those mornings! 😉 My six year old enjoyed being able to take pictures the most!

I lost my 4 year old’s attention while waiting for Gonzo to load. There seems to be a delay in each character’s story. Gonzo gets stuck and with a little shake of your device your child can get him “unstuck”. I love the concept of using this app to divert a crying child from his or her owies to the antics and fun of these Muppet characters. After all, haven’t all of us experienced an inconsolable child at one time or another after they get hurt?

The Band-Aid Magic Vision application, uses Augmented Reality technology to merge your child’s real-life surroundings with graphics displayed on the digital screen to unlock a special world where Disney’s The Muppets characters come to life to distract your child from their boo boo.

This app is absolutely free, so download yours today! Available at iTunes.com. Simply search for Band-Aid Magic Vision or click here for the direct link.

Visit the Band-Aid website for more information about Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages www.Band-Aid.com

“I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages and received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.”

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Learning a New Language

Posted by html404 on May 25, 2012
in Education, School

Ever since I was a little girl taking fourth grade French, I have been interested in languages. I took French from 4th-12th grade and even tried to do a correspondence course on top of my college work – I went to an itty bitty school that did not offer languages. After all that, I am still not fluent in French. I was a good student, my school’s program just was not set up to allow for students to become fluent speakers of the language. 🙁 That’s the sad part. I was always told that total immersion was the best way to learn a new language. In that line of thought our tenth grade class went on a Quebec trip to “learn” French. Imagine my disappointment (and others) while trying to speak the language to the locals they spoke back in English! That’s right they could tell we were not French speaking and probably didn’t want us butchering their lovely language. It defeated the purpose of our whole trip though. I did have a friend who went on what was called a French Immersion trip, which was longer than the week we took to go to Quebec, as I believe it was a 6-week long course. She was not suppose to speak English at all during that whole time so she learned a lot more French that way.

The plus side to all of that is that I can pick out words in print or understand some of what is being said when people are speaking French, if they are not speaking too rapidly. And I do remember enough that I can toss out a phrase or question and have my family look at me blankly because they have no idea what I just said. My husband being the goof ball that he is will usually come back with, “Donde es la bano?” (“Where is the bathroom?”) in Spanish because that’s about the only thing he knows. 😉

Now that I have children, I really try to encourage their interests. My oldest daughter has long been interested in learning Spanish. We have tried kids vocabulary books, a small little Spanish program on cassette and asking our Spanish speaking neighbors how to say certain words. But nothing has been consistent or easy, as those of you who have studied another language know. It takes a lot of discipline and a real interest to learn a new language. So much of what we have done has been things that were done when my daughter was younger, as I have never wanted to spend a lot of money on Rosetta Stone type programs in case they sat and collected dust. “O me of little faith” I know, but I’ve been there and had that happen.

More recently though when my daughters expressed an interest in another Spanish learning resource, Lightning Fast Spanish, I was willing to give it a try. As the title denotes, it sets children and adults up for success to learn every day words in it’s easy to follow activities. My daughters have only looked at it, as have I. We have not been consistently trying to work at memorizing any words or phrases.

Each lesson is broken down into:
Concept
Preparation
Conversation
Vocabulary

The lessons cover topics like: different pieces of clothing, colors names of places or places to go timing of events, getting dressed, brushing hair, packing lunch, comparison words, toys, food, items you see walking around the block, games sports, playground equipment, body parts, school activities, dinner time vocabulary, household items etc. are covered in these 15-lesson book. Plus there is 20 pages of fun activities and games for additional practice – bingo, scavenger hunts, the Hokey Pokey (remember doing that song in Music class? I do!) twister and more.

What is great about this 63-page book is that each of the activities and lessons are stand alone so you can start anywhere. Other advantages is that the book is short, as are the lessons and it’s every easy to understand. Best of all it is very budget friendly – $14.95 for a paperback version or $9.99 for the ebook. It may be purchased on Amazon.

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Playing Uno – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on May 23, 2012
in Family Stuff, Kids Toys, Wordless Wednesday

This little girl loves to play Uno! She also likes to give herself all the 4+ and the change color cards!

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Autism – Invisible Disability

Posted by html404 on May 22, 2012
in Articles, Guest Post, Health

Because Matthew, my son with autism, looks so “normal” many people don’t believe he has a disability. He has no visible problems, all of his limbs are well formed, he carries no telltale traits that would clue the casual observer into the fact that he struggles with many normal activities. Even extended family has questioned his diagnosis because during their brief encounters with him, he appears to be just fine. He looks “good”.

But in reality he has a pervasive developmental delay that touches almost every aspect of his life. Over the years of “looking good”, he has had to participate in physical therapy to help him learn to hold his head erect, crawl, sit, walk and run. He still works with an occupational therapist to help him with his fine and gross motor problems such as writing, coloring, ball play and balance, among other things. His autism has left him ill-equipped to deal with every day stressors and he is prone to bouts of anger and temper tantrums. He requires close adult supervision while at school because he does not have the attention span to stay on task, raise his hand, or complete his assignments. While my husband and I understand that his behaviors stem from his autism and how his brain handles (or doesn’t handle) certain situations, many people assume he is just a poorly behaved child and that we are negligent parents.

I used to feel bad if other people looked at us as if we had no control over our child, or as if we didn’t care. I used to think their opinions mattered. Then I realized that we are more involved in our child’s life than many parents. We know his moods intimately and read his actions to gauge what interventions are needed at that moment. Because of our devotion to Matthew we have actually been able to help him improve so much that his autism is no longer impacting him to the same extent it previously did. He has become extremely high functioning and we now feel confident that he will be able to attend college and hold a job in the future. Of course this now makes his autism even more invisible. He looks even more “normal” or “average”. And I guess ultimately we want his autism to be completely invisible, so invisible, that he no longer qualifies for the diagnosis. The reality of autism is that it affects a child’s behavior and physical condition without leaving physical markers, which in turn make it undetectable to many. Autism is an invisible disability.

Maryann is the mom behind Matthew’s Puzzle where she blogs about her son’s autism recovery.

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Great Day To Be A Dog #iLoveMyK9 #CBias #SocialFabric

Posted by html404 on May 20, 2012
in Animals, Articles, Family Stuff, Shopping

We love our new puppy, as if you couldn’t tell by how much I talk about him here on the blog! Ha! He’s become another member of the family and a source of endless stories. He is pretty funny. While we have been working in the garden this week, we’ve been trying to get him to stay out of that area, which is partially fenced but has some openings. So a few times we have yelled, “Out Padfoot!” It usually takes a few times with a clap of the hands. This one particular time I was walking towards him saying, “Out” in a growl-y voice. What does he do? It’s like he was sassing me, he does a little skip around wagging his tail, then goes down on his front paws and barks at me! Of course, I had to run over and give him a pet and “Good dog” because he did get out. 😉

The children have been having fun with the chicks, turkeys and ducks. This week they have been taking them outside and kind of tossing them up in the air and allowing them to fly down to the ground. It’s pretty fun to watch, except when one Turkey flew into a tree – that scared me because I thought it’s poor wings would be hurt, but it was ok. They have also been trying to train Padfoot to be nice to the poultry. My oldest at one point had two chicks on Padfoot’s back. He did pretty good, but she stayed with him the whole time. I should have told her to give him some dog treats but I didn’t think of it. He loves his treats and since he is almost out of the last ones we got, I had to go to Walmart to buy him more. There are many dog treats to choose from, many of which are unhealthy, I ended up deciding to buy the pup Pup-Peroni Mix Stix, Milk-Bone Trail Mix and Milo’s Homestyle Kitchen Chicken Meatballs. I am not sure which one he prefers yet, but he sure likes to eat! Update: Milo’s Chicken Meatballs are Padfoot’s new favorite dog treat! I chose small packages because I hate to buy a big thing of them only to find out Padfoot doesn’t like the treats. The children have a tendency to give the puppy too many treats, so much so he ends up neglecting his yummy puppy food. 🙁 Time to hide them!

While I was out I also purchased the same items for a friend who also got a puppy a few months ago. We wanted to surprise her with them because she is such a good friend and they were suppose to come over for lunch this week but we had to cancel. Here’s a photo of my oldest with our friend and isn’t her little Chivalry cute?

You can read more about my shopping trip here. And also feel free to connect with these brands on Twitter and Facebook. @Milkbone, Milk-Bone’s Facebook page and @PupPeroni.

When there’s dog treats around, it’s always a great day to be a dog!

“I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™. #CBias #SocialFabric”

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Sunshine, Dolphins and a Boat Ride #Brandcation #GulfCoast @CirclePRShawn

Posted by html404 on May 20, 2012
in Animals, Blog Stuff, Business, Travel

On Sunday, May 6, our last and final day of Brandcation, we went on a Dolphin Cruise. We arose at 6-ish in the morning and after a quick breakfast of Dole Fruit Cups and Dunkin’ Donuts we went out to meet the boat at 7am at the dock. Yes, all we had to do is walk down to the dock at the beach where we had the Blogger Olympics. Awesome, eh? It was a beautiful, clear day. We truly couldn’t have asked for a better day. I love dolphins so this was definitely one of the highlights of Brandcation. I have seen them before, but always in captivity. To see dolphins in the “wild” was a new experience. One I will never forget.

Photo courtesy of Trisha at Momdot.

The captain and his crew were very nice and so hospitable and accommodating. They truly made the boat ride more pleasant for our group. From making themselves available to take pictures, to the informative tour guide to even allowing a few of the ladies be “captain” for a few minutes each. They got to steer the boat all by themselves! It was great!

Captain: Nicole of www.WriteSpell.com Photo courtesy of Trisha at Momdot.

We thoroughly enjoyed the conversations, the breeze in our faces and the gorgeous view of “The Sound” as we kept our eyes open for dolphins. When that time came, the captain actually gave me for spotting the first dolphin. One person thought they had seen something, then as I scanned the water I spotted a dolphin and the captain and crew member confirmed it. From there on out we just followed their path.

The water was calm and that green/blue that you see in photos in the tropics. Just beautiful. The dolphins were in smaller pods and one pod had a baby. For a while the dolphins were at a distance but the further we went out the closer we got to them. It was totally awesome. I took mostly video because it was too hard to snap a photo and make sure I actually got one of a dolphin before it disappeared beneath the water again.

I am relieving this whole experience now and it is such a fun, relaxing memory. Thank you Circle PR for providing this opportunity!

Enjoy the videos!