Mom Life in the PNW

Great Educational and Fun Learning Apps for Preschoolers!

Need help with your preschooler/kindergartener in the learning department? I guarantee if you try these out, they’ll be breezing through class in no time. They’re all 3 fun and educational!

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Update 3/10/15

I’m glad they added more free options, but I feel like $9.99 would be worth it to unlock everything completely since my niece loves playing around in it.

As the title says, my 3 year old niece thoroughly enjoys it! She loves singing along in the karaoke section and watching the dog be interactive. The farm cards are a nice surprise too! But, you get limited access to each book, so in order for your child to thoroughly enjoy what’s offered in the app, you’d have to pay $9.99 for full access.

 

Great learning tool for preschoolers

My little niece hasn’t entered preschool yet so this gives her a head start on being able to read and write letters and numbers. I love it! She loves tracing, which she then is able to remember and do it on actual paper. She feels so accomplished and smart with this app. I can’t say greater things about it.

 

The graphics are great and attention grabbing, which in turn makes the little ones want to play it. It’s the perfect app for those that need a little help steering their preschoolers in the right direction of basic learning. There’s even some fun songs to sing a long to!

 

This post was created in partnership with Mom Buzz Media and Kids Academy. All opinions expressed are my own.

DIY Paper Mobile for Nursery!

I of course didn’t come up with this myself, Pinterest had a little bit to do with it, okay A LOT to do with it. I was needing ideas to spruce up our nursery after de-cluttering it and getting it ready for baby girl and this DIY Paper Mobile caught my eye. I showed my sister and she of course wanted me to make her one in exchange for her making me a rag rug, so I did it in Oregon Duck colors like they wanted. *puke* not a college football fan, especially the Ducks since everyone and their grandma rides their coat tails around here.

So, I decided to borrow my sisters newly purchased Cricut Explore to do this tedious task. I didn’t realize how many circles I would need or how time consuming this would be. If I decide to start on one for baby girls room, I think I will do less because this one turned out long. I imagine it’s because I didn’t make the circles super close together to create a fuller look as you can see on the middle ring below.

diy paper mobile

In the instructions, the original poster used a giant hole punch. I figure to lessen the costs, I’d just set it to however big I wanted the circles on the Cricut and rinse and repeat. I made about 20 circles on an 11×8 stock card piece of paper in the colors I chose, and divided up the amount of circles for each string in the 4 different colors (dark green, regular green, yellow, light yellow). There were also images on the Cricut explore to make the paper mobile more football oriented so I selected the football and the duck feet which are both on the middle-inner ring to go with my Oregon Duck football theme.

Overall, I think it turned out cute, the most frustrating part was stringing all of the circles because I couldn’t get the sewing string to double knot in the same spot so it wouldn’t fall through after poking it with a needle. After a day or two of fiddling with that, I finally got it down and it made it go a lot faster.

For step by step instructions, please check out the original posters tutorial on the DIY Paper Mobile.

My final outcome.

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 Sorry about the crappy photo, hopefully my sister will hang it up soon so I can have her take a better picture.

First Boy in the Family Has Arrived!

My sister was induced last Wednesday and my nephew Braylon has arrived weighing in at 7lbs 14oz, which is about a 1lb bigger than her girls were. Unfortunately though, he’s been in the hospital ever since birth because his bilirubin count was extremely high, so it had the doctors worried during his first 24 hours of life. He’s been in the photo therapy light machine since, but apparently one day they left the top lights off for who knows how long so his levels raised again. He’s 6 days old now, so even though his levels are still what I’d say are high, he’s able to go home for the time being but is still being monitored with blood tests every day. His poor little foot has had enough damage from all the blood draws. I hope and pray that he gets better and that none of this is a cause for concern, but seeing photos of him in this machine is heart wrenching. Poor little fella!

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I haven’t gotten a chance to see him in person yet since they live 3 hours away, but I am hoping I get to love on him soon. He needs it after being in this thing for so long.

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My sister kind of eased my fears a little bit with her 3rd birth since she ended up getting the epidural for the first time ever. She said she doesn’t know why she never did it with the other 2, because it ended up bringing on great relief which helped with being able to push when the time came. Pitocin is not something you’ll want to endure long without an epidural I heard since it makes contractions 100 times worse. I am just hoping and praying that I do not have to be induced. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of pain even for a second! She said she never tore either, but I imagine that’s because she’s already birthed twice. Either way, I am hoping that doesn’t happen to me either! LOL wishful thinking.

Here’s to hoping I have a kind and gentle labor and delivery…

Natural Ways to Reduce Aches and Pains

Natural Ways to Reduce Aches and Pains

One of the leading causes of most aches and pains is being overweight. Our bodies are not designed to cater to the extra weight which should be a no brainer. When I see or hear people complaining about how they threw their back out time and time again, I just shake my head and think silently to myself because no one wants to hear they’re not healthy or that being overweight is contributing to their pain issues.

When I was 40 lbs overweight, I had constant knee pain that would occur every time I had my knee bent. It would only go away when I straightened it out which is not something you can do if you’re traveling on a plane, in a car or any other place with tight knit quarters. It was not fun! I decided I needed to do something about it, like lose 40lbs which helped tremendously as I do not have any more knee pain!

There are other natural ways to reduce aches and pains as well, for instance; MELT Method Training.

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The MELT Method® (MELT) is a self-treatment technique that helps people get out and stay out of chronic pain in just ten minutes a day. When pain becomes chronic, the body’s natural state of stability and balance declines. When a body isn’t stable, it can’t be efficiently mobile. By learning how to MELT, you can learn to actively partake in decreasing stuck stress daily so it doesn’t accumulate and cause symptoms that sap your vitality and energy.

To effectively do the MELT Method for natural pain relief, you’ll need to buy soft body rollers and balls in order to do the techniques in the book. Doing this method quickly re-hydrates connective tissue which then releases the bodies long-held tension. MELT also re-balances the nervous system and boosts the body’s natural healing and repair mechanisms.

 

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MELT improves:

• flexibility & mobility
• posture
• the results of exercise
• range of motion
• sleep & digestion
• overall well-being

 

MELT reduces:

• aches & pains
• wrinkles & cellulite
• tension
• headaches
• risk of injury

 

I think I am going to have order the book so I can try this out for myself. I woke up with hip pain this morning and is still bothering me at this moment. It’s probably from being 33 weeks pregnant, but still, doesn’t hurt to try!

Have you ever tried the MELT Method before?

Update: Pregnancy at 32 Weeks!

I officially have 2 months left until I birth this little peanut. It’s coming up so fast that I am kind of getting more nervous. I am not nervous to have her here with us, just nervous of the whole birthing process. My sister keeps freaking me out about how she’s freaking out about dealing with the pain again and this is her 3rd. = If birth is such a painful process, why are people crazy enough to keep doing it? LOL Just goes to show that we’re selfless when it comes to the miracle of new life.

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I’ve already made the decision to get an epidural if I can’t handle the pain, but I am hoping I can deal with it without getting one. But after reading some birthing stories about the ring of fire, I don’t think I’ll be avoiding it. Jeez, I do not recommend Google searching birthing stories; it might just freak you out more like it did to me. Not all are horrendous or scary though and everyone’s situation is definitely not going to be the same, so take that into consideration if you decide to read up.

I’ve been so busy lately with house stuff, birthdays, baby showers that I haven’t had too much time to update this blog or do anything else really. We had to clean out the spare bedroom, get it painted, picked up a crib and dresser set that my husband’s cousin gave us and gave that a touch of white paint since it was chipped and marked up pretty good. It came out insanely cute. I also went with a mint greenish color for the walls, and a satin white finish to the running boards to make it pop and at first it looked scary, but once it was finished, it looked nice. I’m going to add some pink decor in there to hopefully girly it up a little bit more. Can’t wait to see the end result once everything is put together. I need to start working on washing and hanging the 3 garbage bag full of baby clothes my sister gave us. It seems never-ending. I have so much to do and so little time to do it in.

the walls are not that bright or green, don't worry.

the walls are not that bright or green, don’t worry.

Once the nursery is finished up, I’ll do a before and after photo.

 

I’ve been having cramps which I assume are just braxton hicks? I am not 100% sure but my doctor says it’s normal. And TMI, diarrhea. I guess it’s normal at the end stages of pregnancy since your body wants to clean itself out. I’ll have to ask my doc about that but from what I’ve read it’s normal. Other than that, I feel fine besides the random pains in my pelvic area and me running out of breath walking up the stairs in our house.

My husband says I’ve been snoring and keeping him awake. Another pregnancy related annoyance that he’s just going to have to deal with. LOL

I’ve gained about 18lbs now at 32 weeks, 2 days which is fine with me and sounds good with the doc. I imagine I’ll be gaining at least a lb every week from here on out. I am not worried about my weight at this point since it doesn’t seem like I am gaining at an alarming rate. I know people who’ve gained 50lbs+ with their pregnancies and I am just like how? I can’t eat at this end stage because my stomach is so smooshed that I feel constantly full. I am eating, don’t get me wrong, but not enough to warrant an abundant amount of weight gain. It’s kind of mind baffling, but I guess everyone’s bodies are different. As long as I have a healthy baby, that’s all that matters to me. Kind of curious how much she’ll weigh at birth since my sister has 6lb tiny babies, which will probably be my nephews weight too when he’s born in 4 days.

I guess that’s all for now. I’ll do an update on the DIY stuff I did for my sisters baby shower in another post.