Stuff Parents Need

Easing the chaos in the nest, one find at a time.

Maternity Monday: MAM Products Review and GIVEAWAY!!!

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As far as pacifiers go, we are EXTREMELY loyal to MAM in our house. Darah was horribly offended whenever we tried to offer her any other type of binky. It would promptly be spit out. So MAM it is around here, and the same will be true for our new baby.

MAM has actually just come out with a new pacifier that has really piqued my interest. It’s called the MAM Perfect Pacifier. What makes it so perfect? Well, the nipple is 60% thinner than a traditional pacifier, which means less pressure on baby’s jaw, reducing the risk of misaligned teeth. Great innovation, MAM! It is offered in sizes 0-6 months and 6+ months. Colors currently available are pink, blue and green. The ARV is $5.99 for this product.

MAM also makes some other amazing products, including an entire infant toothbrush line that I reviewed previously. Did you know that they also make bottles? Well, they do! And anyone who is currently expecting is going to want to check out the MAM Anti-Colic Bottle, for sure. It has a vented base that regulates air pressure. This is important because it means that the milk going to baby will have less air in it, which means less gas, which means less crying! Another excellent feature of the bottles is that they are designed to be quickly and easily sterilized in the microwave. No more waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle! These bottles come in 5 oz and 8 oz and retail for $6.99. That’s a great price for such a unique and useful bottle!

MAM products are available at major retailers all over the country.

Win it!: MAM is pleased to offer one lucky Stuff Parents Need reader the following prize pack worth $55!

  •  One triple pack of MAM Anti-Colic Bottle
  • An assortment of MAM Perfect Pacifiers in Blue, Green and Pink

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Win a Vinyl Banner from Uprinting.com! GIVEAWAY!!!

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Do you own a small business? If so, this is a great giveaway for you! Uprinting.com has teamed up with Stuff Parents Need to provide the following giveaway:

2′ x 3′ Vinyl Banners for one winner
with or without 4 Grommets,
premium 15 mil Vinyl Banner
1 Business Days Turnaround time
Free US shipping only

Even if you don’t have a business you need to promote, you should consider banner printing for any number of possibilities, from birthday to retirement banners for special occasions, to welcome home signs for loved ones coming home from time away. We actually have a “Happy Birthday” banner that we put out for everyone’s birthday, and I absolutely love it! It’s a terrific way to quickly decorate for a special day.

 We’ve placed orders from Uprinting.com a few times before and have always been impressed with the quick turnaround and quality products we have received. If you haven’t become a customer of theirs yet, I highly recommend giving them a try!
 Win it!: As I stated early, one of you is going to get a 2×3 banner for your business or home. Woo hoo!

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Introducing Dad and Musician Ben Bowen (Guest Post and GIVEAWAY!!!)

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My name’s Ben Bowen. I’m a husband, a father of two, and a musician. In February 2010 the opportunity came up to teach music to classes of preschool children. I try to approach risk with an attitude of “embracing failure,” so, not knowing quite what to expect, I grabbed my guitar and dove in headlong. The obvious first move was to turn to the music of my own childhood for inspiration: Raffi, Sharon Lois & Bram, The Goat with Bright Red Socks, but soon it became obvious that I needed to start sourcing new material and so, guided by friends’ recommendations and various parenting blogs, I started buying kids’ records.

   After a number of false starts I ended up stumbling across a veritable “Holy Grail” of kids’ and folk music, the Seegers. The first discovery was Pete Seeger’s Birds, Beasts, Bugs, and Little Fishes, a reissue of two LPs from 1955. My family and I we were immediately drawn in by his warm rich voice, his meticulous playing, and songs we’d never heard before but that somehow seemed to awaken a long-dormant part of ourselves. I also found a 94-track album called American Folk Songs for Children, recorded by Mike and Peggy Seeger in 1978 which was a companion to a book written by their mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger, in 1948. For reasons I couldn’t quite explain, these records had a profound effect on me, and the songs began to work their way into both our home life and my teaching.

   See, once upon a time, music was imbued with our collective story. We handed down traditional songs and tales from generation to generation, and even in the very act of that transmission we could sense the history of ourselves, of our ancestors, of old ways of life. More than that, though, folk was the sort of music you didn’t passively listen to on record but was instead the type you got together and sang with your friends and neighbours in your living rooms and kitchens, smiling into one another’s faces as voices blended together and social bonds were strengthened through shared song and common narrative.

Last year I started singing these songs in public in front of audiences. In September I opened for Fred Penner. Shortly thereafter, it seemed like a reasonable next step to try to record some of my favourites. In December, with my sister and brother-in-law in tow, I went into the studio and over the course of a single day recorded ten songs, five of which now appear on the Bumblebee EP.

These songs resonate in me like church bells, cutting through the din and complication of modern life with their simple beauty and often playful lyrics. This EP is the first of what I hope to be many recordings of this kind of music; I hope you find my love for it infectious, and that maybe it encourages you to go out and find more of these rich socio-cultural treasures yourself.

The Bumblebee EP is available on iTunes, CDBaby, and emusic, and can be previewed (so-to-speak) in its entirety at www.benbowen.ca/epk.htm.

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to score the entire album!

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Tropicana Trop50 Review and GIVEAWAY!!!

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I am a big fan of juice, and Darah has followed in my footsteps. We water down her juice (50/50) to cut back on the sugar and calories, though. But as for me, I can’t seem to stand to water down my juice more than about 80/20. What can I say….I have a real sweet tooth!

Fortunately, Tropicana has a line of products that are absolutely perfect for those of us who want less sugar but not less flavor. It’s called Trop50, and so far I’ve tried one flavor (pomegranate blueberry) and absolutely LOVED it.

Here’s what is so unique about Trop50 products. They contain 50 percent less sugar and calories than competing fruit juices. And….NO artificial sweeteners! What they use is a stevia-based sweetener, and it tastes wonderful, because it works to enhance the sweetness of the real fruit juice that’s in the product! All of their yummy varieties have 50 calories per 8 ounce glass and give you a full day’s supply of vitamin C. They are also a good source of vitamin E.

You can find Trop50 products right next to all the other cold orange and other fruit juices, and it comes in all the following varieties:

  • Orange (no pulp, some pulp, no pulp plus calcium and vitamin D)
  • Pomegranate Blueberry
  • Pineapple Mango (next on my list to try!)
  • Farmstand Apple
  • Lemonade
  • Raspberry Lemonade
I also thought you’d like to know about the Trop50 True Resolutions celebration happening on the Trop50 facebook page. If you share the real motivation behind your resolutions on their site, you’ll earn a $1 off coupon for Trop50 AND you’ll be able to send a .50 off coupon to up to 50 of your friends. Sweet! But wait, there’s more! While you are on the site, be sure to enter their sweepstakes…they are giving away a $1,000 gift card! I hope I win (just being honest), but if it isn’t me, I hope it’s you!

Win it!: I’ve got a great opportunity for one of my readers! You will win TWO free product coupons from Trop50! Woo hoo!

 

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My New Year’s Resolution is Hanging on the Wall

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This year, Tim and I decided to go with the increasingly popular trend of bucking a New Year’s resolution list, and coming up with a New Year’s resolution theme. Specifically, we wanted to come up with a word that would help guide us for 2012.

We gave the idea very careful thought, and came up with the word “rooted.” That one idea speaks to many of the specific dreams Tim and I have for ourselves as individuals, a couple, professionals and citizens of Chattanooga.

We tried (admittedly half-heartedly at times) for 6 full years to plant roots in Memphis. It just never happened. We are committed to seeing that happen in Chattanooga, and we’ve already got some roots planted, but we have much more work to do before this place really and truly starts to feel like home. We both want to get more involved in our church and in our community, and really be part of the fabric of this town.

We also want to form more meaningful relationships with people; its really hard to thrive when you don’t have very close personal friendships. I have already met some wonderful Chattanoogans, so I hope to continue to nurture those relationships (haven’t done a good job at all since becoming pregnant, unfortunately). I also hope to meet some new people who will become life long friends. It’s pretty darn tough to make friends with other adults. We are all so busy with our respective commitments, so carving out time for new people is a big ask. I hope that I will make the time to seek out those people, though, and should I be lucky enough for those people to seek me out, I really hope that I will make room in my life for them!

We are also welcoming another child into our family, and this will be a year for Tim and I to become even more rooted in our role as parents. I know we will be tested repeatedly, not just this year, but for the rest of our days, but we have strong foundation now, and I look forward to seeing it become even stronger as we grow.

Having a theme is easier to remember than having a list of 10 goals. My original idea was to put the word somewhere we could see it daily, like on the fridge. But then I thought it would be even more powerful to see a creative expression of this word, through art, hung in our home where we could enjoy its beauty and meditate on its meaning throughout the year.

So, of course, I turned to Gallery Direct to put together something truly beautiful. Would you like to see it?

This is a print of a photo I found on Flickr, under the creative commons licensing section. When something has a creative commons license, that means you are free to use it as long as you attribute the photographer. This is a beautiful piece by Kevin Buehler. It really spoke to both of us, as it shows these really big roots stretching out far and wide. It now hangs in our kitchen/dining room, and is in a place where we see it many times each day. I can actually see it from my spot at the kitchen table right now!

This custom print has already helped get me re-motivated to work more on our business we are launching (something I’ve let fall completely to the wayside for the past 3 weeks) and has inspired some quality conversations between Tim and me. The frame is absolutely stunning…this is so much better than sticking a word on the fridge!

If you are in need of some inspiration in your house, consider framed art. If you have a particular picture in mind that you’d like to get framed, you are REALLY in luck, as I have an awesome coupon code for you! Use code photo75 to save 75% off your canvas photo print! It expires on 2/1/2012, so hop to it!

Disclosure: I serve as a blog ambassador for Gallery Direct. Product samples are provided as part of the program. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Woombie: A New Swaddling Technique

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In our house, we are swaddling evangelists. Darah LOVED to be swaddled. Like, more than any other baby I know. She was tightly swaddled including her arms until she was about 5 months old (by her insistence!) and was tightly swaddled with arms out until she was probably 16 months old (again, by her insistence). Even now, at 2 and 5 months, she likes her blanket to be very loosely swaddle-like around her (of course she pops right out of it, but it’s a sleep cue to her, we think). Her swaddling blankets have been one of the very biggest work horses in the nursery.

So it won’t surprise you to hear that we will be swaddling baby #2. But I have learned a few things about swaddling in the time since Darah was bundled up like a pea in a pod. Most notably, I’ve learned that you have to take care not to make the swaddle too tight around the legs, as that can impede their hip development. I also know from experience that a loose swaddle on a newborn and young infant is kind of pointless. This has really left me scratching my head about what to do!

woombie review

Oh bloggers, how you help me so! Thanks to some great reviews that I read, I learned all about this fabulous product called Woombie. If you have never practiced swaddling, then the look of it may make you nervous. Let’s be real, it looks like an infant straight jacket. But as a swaddling aficionado, I’m super excited at the look of it. It’s this perfect balance of a snug and tight environment, which little ones crave (think of the womb!) while also leaving some stretch opportunity for those growing legs and hips.

I also like that if you happen to have a major squirmy worm on your hands, there’s no blanket to come unraveled, which means no suffocation risk. That’s great for peace of mind. We received the newborn original Woombie in raspberry (FABULOUS color, by the way) and the material seems to be just too right…breathable, yet will keep your baby nice and warm without overheating.

Woombie offers a very impressive variety of styles and options for your little snuggle bear. The Houdini is for those babies who can get out of ANY swaddle. Not this one! I’m also drawn to the organic line, as well.

Prices for the Woombie vary depending on which style you select. The original that we reviewed retails for $26.99 and fits 5-13 pounds. They also offer a size for 14-19 and 20-25 pounds, as well as a 3-6 pounds for preemies. Woombies can be purchased online at Amazon or you can find your nearest retailer.

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win an Original Woombie in your choice of available colors and size!

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The Animal Place Stuffed Animal Review: So Realistic!

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My mother-in-law has a holiday movie that she loves to watch every single year. Actually, it’s just one scene from this movie that she HAS to watch. She laughs SO hard just thinking about it. It’s HILARIOUS to watch her as she conducts her annual ritual of watching “the squirrel scene” from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

If you are not familiar with this scene, it involves a squirrel being discovered hanging out inside the family’s Christmas tree. MUCH hilarity ensues when the squirrel decides to attack! Here’s a clip (WARNING: bad language is present in this clip).

This year I was able to add an extra dose of laughter to our family’s Christmas celebration by placing a VERY realistic squirrel in the tree for my mother-in-law to discover. She laughed and laughed when she found it, and now I’m on a mission to get another squirrel just like the one I have for her.

Darah has dibs on this one, though. She loves to chase after squirrels in the park, and when she first saw this squirrel, she thought it was real and was a bit nervous about touching it! That just how real it looks, people! This squirrel is from The Animal Place, a company that makes gorgeous, handcrafted animal toys. Their products have been endorsed by major conservation organizations because of their excellent attention to detail. These are the products of skilled workmanship, as is evidenced by the distinctive features of each animal.

Most every child has a favorite animal, and the odds are good that The Animal Place has a representation of that exact animal. After all, they have over 150 species represented and 10 different collections. They even have extraordinary life-sized reproductions that can hold riders up to 250 pounds! Woah!

I have to say that I’m extremely impressed with the quality of the toy we received. I believe it is going to hold up very well to years and years of play. The squirrel we received retails for $23.82 and the quality does justify the price. The dragon you see above is certainly a splurge, but it is life-sized and can come flying into your home for $927.00.

The Animal Place is pleased to offer a discount to Stuff Parents Need readers! Use code NEWYEAR2012 to save 15% off your order! Woo hoo!

Disclosure: I received a complimentary product for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own. 

Yonanas Review: Making Healthy “Ice Cream”

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I don’t watch cable tv, so I usually miss all the latest commercials. But even I have been hearing about this product called Yonanas. It’s getting attention on many different media outlets, including magazines andblogs, which I do read! Yonanas is a machine that turns frozen fruit (bananas, strawberries, mangoes, you name it!) into a creamy product that has the exact same consistency as ice cream. But it’s JUST FRUIT!!!

Yonanas Review

Check out this quick video to get a demonstration of how Yonanas works. What you are seeing below is consistent with what I experienced when making Yonanas for the first time.


yonanas review 1. I’m not usually a fan of kitchen gadgets that only serve one purpose. But I LOVE Yonanas. What is produces absolutely CANNOT be replicated in a blender or food processor. I was totally surprised by just how smooth and creamy the final product really is.My thoughts:

2. This is an AWESOME tool for anyone with a sweet tooth or with family members who like cold, sweet treats. The flavors I crave more than any other are cold and sweet, so to have the opportunity to make something so good and not have any sugar or fat added to the mix is a really good thing for me. I actually served some Yonanas to Darah as part of her dinner the other day (and why not? What I made only had bananas, blackberries and raspberries in it!). Also, in my pregnancy I really crave ice cream, and I love the idea of reaching for some Yonanas when the craving hits hard.

3. Yonanas is dishwasher safe. Hallelujah!

I have decided that the product Yonanas makes is so good that devoting limited shelf space to this one-trick pony is worth it! Just be sure to use the really ripe bananas, as they are the sweetest!

There are a few drawbacks to Yonanas, but again, both things are not sufficient to make me not endorse the product.

1. I found that it is best to only make as much yonanas as you want in one serving. I made a large batch once with the idea to store away the rest, and I found that when I returned to eat the yonanas, the stuff was pretty darn hard. It did thaw out, but it took about 20 minutes for it to get soft enough to dig back in with a spoon easily. If you plan ahead that’s not a problem, but if you want some ice cream NOW, then you’ll be disappointed.

2. When making your Yonanas, you should disassemble the device in order to get all of the yummy goodness out. I found that a fair amount of “ice cream” was still inside the device once I had finished making my treat. It was no big deal to scrape it out with a spatula, but that’s something to keep in mind as an extra step.

We’ll be making use of this product and are going to enjoy experimenting with different fruit combinations to find our favorite blends of healthy ice cream. My mouth is watering just thinking about summer time when all the berries will be in season. I’ll be in strawberry yonanas heaven! 🙂

Yonanas can be purchased for $49.99 at a wide variety of retailers (see store listings here).

Disclosure: I received a complimentary product for review purposes. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

Design ‘N Doodle Travel Game Review and GIVEAWAY!!!

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Thanks to my great blog readers, I got some very good advice about traveling with littles before our big trip out to California for Christmas. One piece of advice that I heard over and over was to have a new toy or activity for your child. Get something that they had never before played with, and that would engage and occupy them for quite a bit of time.

I did just that by bringing along a Sesame Street Design ‘N’ Doodle! These are offered by Patch Products, a company that has launched a great variety of activities and games for kids of all ages!

The Design ‘N’ Doodle actually got pulled out very early in the trip. We had to take a shuttle from Chattanooga to Nashville, and about 40 minutes into that 2 hour trip, Darah decided that she didn’t want to play with any of the other toys we brought, and that it would be more fun to sing at the top of her lungs. We, as her parents, can tolerate and admittedly sometimes even enjoy her solo performances, but the other 6 passengers in the van did not seem quite as enthusiastic about becoming her audience. So into the bag I went and pulled out this new toy.

Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and she said, “I see Elmo! May I have it, please???” She was hooked from the start. The Design ‘N’ Doodle is a portable magnetic play board that also incorporates the use of dry-erase markers. It folds up easily and has a handle. It really is a great item for car or plane trips, as I can attest! The setting is Sesame Street, itself, and it can be enhanced with the magnet Sesame Street figures that come with the set. Kids can also draw on the magnets and the scene, itself.

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader is going to win a Design ‘N’ Doodle of your choice!

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