Top 3 Thursday's

Wow! I haven't noticed how long it's been since I've written in my blog. Sorry to all my readers for not keeping things up to date if you are following my blog. I really haven't noticed how many viewers I actually have until I logged in today! So thank you!


I wanted to do another REVIEW on three fairly new products I have that have shown to be a great hit for my daughter and I. So lets get right to it!

1. Skip Hop Forma Diaper Backpack:

                                      

Bag Description:

Black quilted look with a teal interior. 

Exterior: 3 zipper compartments; 2 bottle slots on the sides; adjustable backpack straps with stroller clips; top handle

Interior: small zipper compartment contains a small slip pocket; medium sized compartment contains no interior pockets; main compartment contains two small slip pockets, and a large slip pocket to hold the changing pad. Changing pad included along with 2 cubes. 

I know I posted about a new diaper bag a few months ago in "Baby bag Dilemma." At that time, I was using a Vera Bradley bag called the Carryall Cross body. I unfortunately had to stop using it as my main diaper bag because, now that my daughter is a little older (will be 2 in a couple of months.... AH!), it was just too small to hold everything I needed for a whole day out. Since she's older and loves to run around an be active, I found myself taking her out on longer day trips to the park, or to grandmas, etc. So I definitely needed a bigger bag to hold all of her stuff. I was planning to still use the Carryall Cross body but I completely fell in love with this new diaper bag, I haven't reverted back to it.

Now, before I went wasting anymore of my money on diaper bags that wouldn't last long, I did my research until I stumbled upon the PERFECT bag for me. I knew I definitely was sold on having a backpack diaper bag but I just didn't know which one to go with. I was stuck between this Skip Hop diaper backpack OR another Vera Bradley item, the Campus Backpack. I went with this one for these following reasons that sold me:

A. Lightweight. Well, its essentially lightweight until I put ALL my stuff in it. I'm a packer, but even still, wearing it on my back doesn't feel uncomfortable, so that was a plus. The straps are padded and fit very comfortably. Con- the straps could adjust better where it lays on my back propped up and not hanging off my back. Vera Bradley bags lay very well on your back to where it doesn't add strain to your lower back. But I'm working on sewing the straps shorter so it will fit on my back according to liking. 

B. Stroller Clips:

 This was ideal! I don't know how many times I've struggled trying to grab things from my bag when it's sitting in the storage compartment under the stroller. This enables me to clip it to the hand bar and makes getting things in and out of my bag quick and easy. It also frees up the storage space to put our jackets or anything else we are carrying.

C. Roomy Interior:

 It is very spacious inside!

D. Two cubes included:

One cube is insulated for bottles. I use it for my daughters snacks. And the other cube has a mesh front which I'm not really sure what the use is intended for but I found it to be great as my medicine bag. 

E. A mommy pocket!

 Yes! This was so exciting for me. The front zipper has a built in cell phone pocket which I love. My other diaper bags, I had to put my phone in a pocket with my other things and my phone screen would get scratched up. This pocket protects it from everything else in the pocket. Although I don't use the pocket as a mommy pocket currently, I would still use this pocket for my cell.

I've had this bag for about 3 months now and I will never go back to my old diaper bags! I found a winner. I was hoping I did after paying $70 for it at Babies R US. Ridiculous. Never would of thought a diaper bag would cost this much. But at least I'm happy with it and its a good investment. I'm hoping it will work when my hubby and I expands our family and I have children to pack for.

I will follow up and do a 'what's in my diaper bag' soon to show you what this bag can hold! Look forward to that soon! 

2. Step 2 Neat and Tidy II Cottage

This playhouse has proven to be a really great investment for my daughter. She absolutely loves this playhouse and could play outside for hours in it. She loves dragging me in there with her. I'm not going to lie, it became my playhouse as well. We have a blast in it. I bought it from Walmart online. It retailed for $159. Its actually one of the cheaper playhouses I've found. This playhouse is good because it has a floor where as some of the other playhouses do not. It also comes with cute stick on features to create a homey look such as a fireplace, light fixtures, and a wall clock. The playhouse includes a toy cell phone, built in shelf, a table, and built in seat, grill, shutters that you can open and close, a dutch door, working doorbell, and a compartment for flowers or whatever you want to make it. (I kept it as a flower bed with some fake flowers). 

Floor bottom

The Grill

Her flower garden

It comes in parts and was very easy to assemble on my own! So that was a PLUS in my book! I highly recommend this playhouse if you're looking for one and don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on one.

3. Gaiakids Sleep & Relax herbal syrup 

This product is one that I've started using about a week ago. I'm not a fan of any kind of sleep aids especially for a toddler. What gave me ease about this product is that it is completely herbal. Its made of chamomile which is a natural relaxing herb, lemon balm, and passion fruit. With very little ingredients, I felt comfortable enough to give this a try. 

Ingredients: 

Organic sugarcane, water, xantham gum, lemon fruit juice and orange natural flavors.

The instructions say to give the required dose for each age group and hour before bedtime. The reason we turned to this is because my daughter has insomnia. We've been battling this her whole life! Some nights are worse then others. She just has the hardest time falling asleep. So I wanted to find something that will help her to relax and let sleep naturally come to her. Since my little girl is NOT a fan of drinking water, I couldn't give her chamomile tea so this product was worth a shot. Its sweet and can be easily mixed into a cup of juice. 

Our first 2 nights were a success. Within 30 minutes, our baby girl was off to sleep. The next mornings, we saw a huge improvement in her behaviour. She woke up well rested and not looking too fatigued from the long night she encountered. This product was seeming like God's gift to us. As the week went on, it started taking longer for her to fall asleep. So I'm not completely sure if I can say its a miracle worker but we will see how it goes. I'm definitely not going to give it to her every night but as for now, it's helping a little. 

Well, there you have it, my top 3 products for the week!

 Thanks for reading :-) 

It's Crafts Time!!!!

Having a toddler is an exciting thing! It's definitely filled with exhausting days of entertaining. Some days are filled with so much entertainment that I'm ready for bed by 7:30pm. As exhausting as I can get, I wouldn't change it for anything.

I have recently become a SAHM during the week and I'm keeping my nursing skills current by working  the overnight shift on weekends. It works when you have children and want to be there for them. I am super blessed that my husband and I are even able to do this. Don't get me wrong, of course things would be a lot easier if I worked full time, but we both know and believe it's so important for me to be home with our little one. With my new schedule, it took a while to come up with some type of productive schedule for the both of us while we are home during the week. It's so easy to become a couch potato and put on tons of weight. Its hard to do that chasing a toddler around all day anyway. But I could just put on the TV and my baby would entertain herself by being a couch potato right along with me. But that just wouldn't do. So I looked up some schedules online to give me an idea of what a productive schedule for a toddler should look like. Although we don't follow this schedule to a tee everyday, I try to incorporate all these things in the hours we are awake!

Here's what our schedule looks like:

7am: Mommy wakes up. Personal mommy time: Shower, bible study and prayer.
8am: Baby up. Get her dressed and ready for the day
8:30am: Prepare breakfast. Eat and Bible reading at the breakfast table
9:15am: Take a walk OR playdate with friends
10am: Play time
10:30am: Snack time and story time
11am: Arts and Crafts
11:45am  Prepare lunch and eat
12:30pm: Nap time (mommy chore time)
2:30:  Play time/ music time
3:00: TV time
4:30: Prepare dinner
5:30: Learning activity (first words, alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors, POTTY training)
6:30: Dinner
7:15: Bath time
8:00: Quiet Time/ Story Time

The part that's real sketchy and we are working on---->
8:30 Bedtime

Although my daughter sleeps through the night most nights, we still have a hard time getting her to sleep for bedtime. She can lay in bed for hours until 10-11pm. I don't know how she cant be sleepy by 8:30 being that she slept so long ago for a nap. But, its a work in progress.

The new thing I added to my schedule was arts and crafts time. She is still a bit young so most of the crafts I am doing myself but she has a ball playing with every scrap I'm not using or playing in a bowl of cotton balls and popsicle sticks! It can be looked at as sensory play!

This week, we've been working on making art with our HANDS! We already created an autumn tree with my daughters hand prints being the different colored leaves. She wasn't a huge fan of getting her hands all dirty with paint but we got the job done. I also let her make handprints on a small canvas and let her take over to do some of her own artwork. She's quite the little artist!

Pinterest is an amazing website! I get all my arts and crafts ideas on it. One that I was dying to try was the salt water dough. You can make baby keepsake ornaments out of it. Today, I gave it a shot. All I needed was 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1/2 cup of water. Mix them all up and start rolling them in balls then roll them out. I took my daughter's hand and pressed it against one flattened dough and her foot on the other. Then you put the printed dough into the oven for 2 hours (depending on thickness) in 200 degree heat. I actually kept it in longer because it was still pretty soft. I also increased the heat to 350 degrees to get it done quicker. The dough should be rock hard once done. Once its done,  I waited for it to cool and then painted the prints with pink paint and labeled them. And BAM! There you have it:

Have Baby will Travel

My husband surprised me this year with a spontaneity that I never knew he had in him. Every year, in the fall, we celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. A time where our whole church comes together from all over the world and dwell together for 7 days. During this time, we pick a location of a list of places it will be held and stay there with Gods people and praise and worship HIM. Most people compare this time to a convention or a retreat. But to us, it's so much more than just that! It's a time set apart that God commands of us and it's a time of fellowship, food, laughter, and fun. The surprise my husband surprised me with was that we were going to France this year. France!  

This has always been a country I've always wanted to travel to. I couldn't ever imagine being able to afford going. But God blessed us this year in so many ways, he made our dreams come true. It was quite difficult for me to imagine an 8 hour flight with our 16 month old. But she was older now and I knew it wouldn't be as hard as traveling with a baby that was younger. So this was the time to do it. If we waited any longer, we'd have to pay for a third ticket. 

I wanted to blog about my traveling experiences with my little one and share my thoughts on my trip. First things first, I must say, the easiest way to travel on a long international flight is to travel overnight. My little girl stayed asleep as if she was sleeping in her own crib back at home. It was amazing. Not a peep from her. My fear was being that "mom with the baby that kept screaming" and being a hindrance to other passengers on the plane. But Juli proved both me and probably all other passengers wrong. It's a completely different story when traveling back home though. This flight was in the morning. She slept through the connecting flight, but the flight returning to America, she was up and starting to get fussy towards the end. Can you blame her though? I was getting fussy too! Who ever said international airlines are spacious and more comfortable, obviously never had to travel with a baby on their lap and a plane full to capacity. I felt like I was going to snap and just jump off the plane at one point! 

Besides the plane ride experience, my experiences in another country was an exhilarating one. Exactly what you think you'd expect from being in another country is what it's like. We had the first 24hours of jet lag and trying to reset our minds on a different time zone. So once that was over, we were good.

 My husband rented a car against everyone's warning of not driving in France. He's a brave man. Especially when they gave us a manual to drive and he hadn't driven one in forever. When we pulled out the airport, we took a deep breath and said a prayer to get us through this next week alive. I had a huge culture shock when it finally dawned on me that we were not in America anymore. From the main language to street signs, English was the foreign language here. The only thing I knew how to say in French was hello and goodbye. This would be an interesting week. 

 

It actually turned out to not be so bad. My husband knew a little more French then I did so we were able to communicate a little with some French people. Thankfully, we met some people who knew a little English. It was a big revelation to me when I realized that this language barrier is what so many foreigners in America must go through. Lets face it, the English language is a tough one to learn. We Americans sometimes don't even know all the rules! I built a better understanding and grew more compassion for those that don't understand. It helped to realize that communication is a huge ordeal. Especially in my line of work where I come across so many different cultures. It's important to get an understanding of the other person. No matter how you try to.

 

I ended up downloading all the street signs in Europe so we knew what the signs mean. Its funny, some of the signs had pictures on them illustrating what they meant just in case you didn't speak French. Well done, France, well done.

 

 Driving in France didn't seem as crazy as everyone was warning us of. The only thing I'd say was crazy was that French people SPEED! And we found out early that the middle lane is ONLY for passing. No coasting. Throughout our week, we drove to different towns to explore. And besides getting lost a couple of times and our lovely GPS losing signal, we made it around pretty good.

 

Mostly all the towns we've visited were what I expected France to look like. A lot of older buildings from like the medieval times. It was very historical and beautiful. I took a lot of pictures. Its a huge difference from Paris. Paris definitely is a lot more modern. What we quickly found out on just our 2nd day was that apart of French culture is that everything closes down at 7pm. And everything takes an afternoon break between 12 and 2. Being from America where nothing seems to ever close down, this was hard for us to get used to. I definitely understand where France is coming from though. Closing at 7pm allows for people to be home with their families at a decent hour. It's definitely something American culture has lost along its way. Family time has been overshadowed by work. I learned that "Family"  means a lot in French custom. Their meal times last 2 hours long. Another thing we had to get accustomed to. Juli couldn't sit still in her high chair for that long. But they like to serve their food with each course, one at a time. With a huge time lapse in between, serving cheese as a dessert after the entrée and wine with every meal was another thing I wasn't aware of with French culture. The food was exquisite and I can say now that I have eaten French food and tried French cheese. Not bad at all.  During the meal times, I kept telling myself, "Why rush?"  America has programmed it in our brains to rush. We seriously do live in a rushing and busy body like society. Take it easy people. Enjoy your food.

 

 

        

 

 

The Town of Chauvigny

 

 

We spent a day in Paris trying to explore everything we ever wanted to see. Not realizing that the Palace of Versaille isn't even in Paris, we stopped there first and toured this massively huge mansion. Even if I hit the lotto, I couldn't see myself living in a place this huge. I don't find it homelike. But that's just me. We spent so much time there trying to see everything, we were running out of time to tour Paris. So after 4 hours, we left and said we will definitely have to come back another time. Especially to see all of Paris. We did manage to make it to the Eiffel Tower. The lines were so long for everything, we just added that to our list of things to see when we returned. We'd definitely come back for an anniversary getaway someday in the near future!

Here's some trips of our exploration of Paris!:

 

 

 

 

 

The Palace of Versaille (Love the hall of mirrors!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eiffel Tower

My long life dream to see this baby in person! Its beautiful

 

 

 

 

Arc de Triomphe

 

 

 

The beautiful Notre Dame