Have a baby that loves to Jump?

This month we were chosen to try out the Fisher Price Luv U Zoo Jumperoo.

This is a great treat for our youngest who is 8 months old. We have always had the activity "excer-saucers" and the hanging door frame jumping toy for our kids, but never a Jumperoo, so I was curious if it is really that different.

The box arrived and it was very easy to put together, just a few minutes of unwrapping the pieces from their plastic, snap together, and it was assembled.

Instantly it was a hit! Not only did she love it, she wanted to stay in it! With the other toys we might have her stay in for a about 7 minutes. With this toy, she was quite happy to be in for a half an hour!

Being a work from home mom, this is awesome!! I was able to get so much work done!!

I love how the sounds and lights encourage her to jump and play more, the more she plays the more the music plays. She loves the bright colors! She changes from moving the small toys working on her fine motor skills, grabbing the dangling animals and then she jumps to her hearts content!!

The music is also great, not something that you get sick of hearing! As a mom with three kids with lots of noisy toys, this is an awesome feature!

Here is the Jumperoo in action!

The Fisher-Price Luv U Zoo Jumperoo is a great toy for your active baby!
Don't have one? You can still enter to win one until June 15th!

Junior Chef: Fancy Fruit Kabobs

How do you get kids to try different foods? You make it fun of course!

This is what we did this month at our Junior Chef event. We made fancy fruit kabobs! You can use any fruit for this, but we went with easy ones of banana and apple!

First we gave the kids a plastic knife to practice cutting their banana into small pieces. This is a great easy and safe way to teach kids how to use a knife!

Then we handed out the apple pieces and they began to string them on their skewer, of course with moms supervision!

Then the real fun began!
First we rolled the kabobs in coconut, then we added a few sprinkles for color and then we had yogurt for dipping!

Was it messy? Absolutely! Was it fun? Of course! And the best part... the kids all loved their fruit creations and ate them all up!

Many of our moms said they will be doing this at home, makes a fun activity and a healthy snack at the same time!

Thank you Huggies for supplying the much needed wipes for this messy but awesome treat!

Organized Playgroups : Baby Babble the Modeling edition

When I heard we had the opportunity to show off some very cute babies and toddlers in some super cute Huggues Limited Edition Hawaiian diapers, I put the call out on our message board to see who was interested in participating!

I had a great response, and we had our first "photo shoot" at our Luau!

Since the response was so great, and because we had a few members with very cute babies unable to attend the luau, who wanted to try out the Diapers, we took the Hawaiian Diapers to our organized playgroup with Babies form 0-12 months of age called Baby Babble!

What exactly is an organized playgroup? It is a way for moms to get together once a week with their kids of a similar age and talk, the way moms can! Mom's take turns offering their homes to the other members of the group. In our Baby Babble group, this is almost always done over coffee, and a snack. But this is in no way a requirement!

Even though I am on my 3rd child, this group with moms of babies is still so helpful, and I so look forward to it each week. Whether it is all about teething, baby measles, who is crawling, walking and not moving. Of course the conversation always turns to baby gear. Which toys, diapers, clothes we love, want and what works!! We love it and need it. Moms need to connect with other moms.

Organized playgroups are just another great thing that is included with your momstown membership, that is still only $45 a year!!

Tales for Tots: Giraffe's Can't Dance

We continued with our Luau theme this month with our Tales for Tots program at Chapters!

We were greeted with Lei's for all the kids, courtesy of Chapters! The kids love any opportunity to dress up! The kids just loved playing while wearing their lei's! Made it feel very summery in the store!

After story time, it was time to do some coloring of some beach papers!!  All the kids took turns, here is K who managed to snag the table to himself, while the other kids were at the train table.

As with every month, the Scholastic sponsored Book was Giraffe's Can't Dance by Giles Andreae & Guy Parker-Rees.

This is a delightful rhyming story about a Giraffe that finds the music he needs to dance to. The pictures are wonderfully vibrant and the story just flows beautifully.

It already is a favourite bed time story at our house, and I am sure there will be another purchase or two of this book to prevent the fights over who gets to read it first!! Lucky Kristin, a momstown Central Alberta member who also gets a copy to take home to her girls!

Join us next month at our Tales for Tots event at Chapters! Check out our calendar for all details.

Art & Play: Luau

 What a great day for a party!!

I love a dress up Party, and I know so do the kids! I hear rumors that some of the kids were in the grass skirts and leis for a few days after the party as well!!

For our craft Portion of our Art and Play event, the kids made their own Lei's out of pipe cleaners and construction paper.

You can get all the details here how to make your own here is a few of our examples... and some kids decided that they were better worn on their heads!

Here are some of the kids dressed up in their Luau costumes! 

 

We also set up picture cutouts for the kids to pose in! 

The surfer was a favorite with both the girls and the boys

 

 

Here are some of the babies and Toddlers in their Fancy special edition Huggies Hawaiian Diapers for the occasion!

Technology and Two Year Olds

Did you know they do not always mix?

This past week has been a crazy week for technology issues involving a certain two year old in our house, who we love dearly, really!

First thing was that she got a hold of Dad's cell phone, managed to take the battery off and decided to "skate" with it. Yes SKATE! One half of the phone was one skate and the battery was the other. We didn't realize what she was doing as she was in the kitchen and all I could hear was "kate" "kating". I went to see and sure enough, Dad's phone had been transformed into skates, on our hardwood floor!

The next instance was with our ipad. I thought I had put it away high enough that she couldn't reach it. She proved me wrong. I went to use it and the accessibility features had been turned on. So imagine you are blind and want to use an ipad. It speaks to you. NON-STOP.  Every button you click, every twitter notification you receive... and do you think we could figure out how to turn this feature off? NOPE.

The last event was the most catastrophic. And I do take some of the blame. Some.

I had left my lap top on the table, and went to make a sandwich for this darling 2 year old. OF course with my back turned, she grabbed my tea (that I had moved far away from my laptop so that this wouldn't happen) and dumped it onto the table, and it ran down the table and touched the laptop. I ran and picked it up immediately, dried it off.

I packed the two little ones into the car and headed to the shop to see if the laptop was salvageable, and if not at least the hard drive... and well the hard drive was. While I was in the store, with one child screaming the other telling the whole store "I pooped my pants" finding out the laptop was done and asking the technician to please turn off the accessibility features on the ipad, he asked me if I was having a good day.  Glad he has a sense of humor!

Little Tikes Sponsored Playdate was a Blast!

It was a rainy day but that made it a perfect day to have an indoor playdate with new toys from Little Tikes!

We had pillow racers and tikestix to play with, and the kids and parents had a great time with new toys!

The dads were immediately drawn to the tikestix, and many cannot wait to try them at home with their kids. It was great to see all the parents interact with the tikestix with the kids, then you know that this is a great family toy that everyone can get involved with!

The pillow racers were loved by all the kids, and we had quite a few "pillow racers races". Checkout these videos!

We had quite a few parents with babies that attended the event, and even though their babies couldn't try out the toys, they appreciated seeing what is up and coming as their kids get older, and liked to see how other kids reacted to the toys. I know that there will be many a pillow racer purchased for upcoming birthdays for the babies!

For more information on any of the toys that we tested make sure you check out www.littletikes.com

Alphabet Play: M is for Moose

 

We held our first alphabet play event at chapters and we learned about the letter M! We made a moose out of the letter M after reading the book "If you give a Moose a muffin".

momstown gets prepared thanks to the Red Cross!

This morning some of the momstown Central Alberta Moms were able to attend a FREE course on personal disaster preparedness!



We learned the three steps to Emergency Preparedness -
1) know the risks 
2) make a plan 
3) get a kit!!

We also learned what to put in our kit, many things that I wouldn't think if right away like a can opener, cash and extra keys!

Also to have a plan if your car is not accessible or useable, what would you do?

Such great information, so much stuff that I know I would forget in the face of a real emergency, hence the need to be prepared!
 
On top of being treated to some very valuable information, the Red Cross Red Deer office spoiled us with Coffee, a fruit tray, with juice and cookies and coloring pages, stickers and tattoos for the kids!



In our take away kits, they even thought of us moms and put all of our papers in a plastic sealed bag so we don't drop anything while we are trying to wrestle our kids into their car seats! BRILLIANT!!

For some great information make sure you check out redcross.ca

Dora was the lucky winner of the door prize of a fanny pack first aid kit!