Leg Huggers Giveaway Winner

And the winner is: #31! Atilla & Tamara of Szögedi Home. You can also follow Tamara on twitter!

You can head over to her blog for some lovely cloth diapering "hippie" good reading, as well as some delightful pictures of some seriously cute babyhood. Just don't tell her son, Levi, that I called him a baby. He's a whole great big year old these days. :-)

Tamara will have 48 hours to respond to the email letting her know she won, else I'll have to go get all creative and have people you tube some competitive slam haiku or something to determine an alternate winner. Don't make me get creative. :-)

Wordless Wednesday: One Half of One Year

Wordless Wednesday

Mommy Panic

Sunday, the 15th of November marked an interesting milestone.

The daycare milestone.

Well, that's not accurate. The childcare at the gym milestone.

The leaving-my-baby-in-the-care-of-a-stranger-for-an-hour milestone.

Yeah.

My gym's childcare center will watch children between the ages of six months and ten years, for up to two hours daily so mom or dad can work out. In my case that's swimming, and now that Snapdragon is six months and ten days old, I decided it was more than necessary for me to be able to get back in shape without counting on daddy's babysitting convenience schedule, and that means the gym's childcare.

To make things even better, my mother in law decided to gift me his "membership" so that I can take him.

Well, I'm sure you can imagine my panic. I'm raising an exclusively breastfed baby who spends more time in a sling than in anything else, well, other than my arms. We co-sleep, I wear him in the shower, we are nearly never apart.

Deep breaths, right?

What if he gets hungry? My teats are in the pool! What if he needs his diaper changed? (like two hours in a fresh diaper is a make or break scenario?) I was worrying about things like his propensity to spit up and the fact that he doesn't sit up well. And that we don't let him sit/lay and cry. What if they did?

Turns out that my sweet Snapdragon isn't suffering from sufficient separation or stranger anxiety for me to have had cause to worry.

Maybe it was a good mood, maybe it was a sign of being well-adjusted, but Snapdragon was fine. There were no tears. He was cheerful.

Maybe there's something to this whole attachment parenting thing after all.

Or maybe the girl who works in the childcare center is simply really good with babies.

Blue Monday: Halloween Blue

This year for Halloween Mongoosine decided that in order to be a proper gothling, she needed blue hair. Who am I to argue?

Besides, it went well with her blue eyes, and her brother's blue pajamas!

For more Blue Monday, sail on over to Smiling Sally.

Failbook Promotions: or, How a Social Media Giant Learned to Stop Meeting The Needs of It's Users and Love the Bomb

So I've been fixing my various giveaways ever since I found out about the new Failbook promotions policies. I don't want to accidentally refer to them by name, since they're all hot about useage of their name, like coupling the word "face" and "book" in a blog giveaway and saying that the sponsor would like to extend you an extra entry just for joining their fan page is somehow going to make Failbook liable for anything. Seriously. It's not like us bloggers are witch doctors who somehow got a hold of their true name and are going to curse it's tech types with impotence. Nope, they're doing that to themselves with their new promotions guidelines.

Seriously? No big. They don't want to exist in the world of promotions and giveaways? Fine. I don't steer traffic to their site, there's less traffic, they make less from advertisers. Who needs em?

But isn't it all a touch ridiculous?

I think the main points of the new promotions guidelines are pretty simple.

The first rule of Failbook is don't talk about Failbook.

The second rule of Failbook is don't talk about Failbook.

No, really though, don't run your promotions and giveaways on failbook.

Don't allow any entries to any giveaways for doing anything on failbook. Not fanning, not commenting, not posting, nothing.

Don't mention Failbook in your promotions or giveaways- in other words, see rules one and two.

I think I'm just going to roll my eyes and remember that I use Failbook to connect with my parents and great aunts and uncles, and not get too uptight about it. How 'bout you? Is this going to be a big impact on the way you do things?

Posh Pads Winner

Congratulations Jaime!

Please respond to the e-mail I sent you, because I really would prefer to run a reasonably cruelty-free blog here, and wombats might get hurt if people have to juggle them for an alternate winner selection process!

I do hope you enjoy your Posh Pads!

Thanks for playing, and may your shirt stay dry.

Wanna get to know Jaime better? You can follow her on twitter, I, for one, do.

Labyrinth Balance Board

Mongoosine is one of those hyperactive kids. You know the type. The can't hold still through dinner, has to be running, jumping, thumping, clapping, snapping, bopping, dancing, drumming, twirling, hopping, jumping up and down and making mama dizzy types.

Well, I am loving the Labyrinth Balance Board because it has her, at least ocassionally, focusing all this exuberance in a manner that doesn't make me feel like I'm going to have a (boom-boom-clap) nervous (boom) breakdown (de-clapty-clap).

Here Mongoosine is tackling the Labyrinth Balance Board with two of the three large wooden marbles. She's trying to make them both go in, which is harder than making them go out.

I think it's great that as she gets better there are different challenges she can try. She can use one marble and make it work it's way out of the labyrinth, or if she's feeling talented, she can work it toward the inside. Then she adds more marbles. She hasn't quite figured out how to move one inward while moving the other outward, but is having a good laugh (and secretly working her core muscles trying not to fall over) trying to figure that out.

As she gets better, I'm thinking of getting out a timer from one of our underplayed board games to see if she can beat the sand. I appreciate that there are many routes to upping the difficulty of this toy.

I haven't quite had the guts to get my less than skinny self up on the board, but her cousin seemed to think it was grand fun the last time she visited.

What I love about the Labyrinth Balance Board

It makes me work on my spelling (labyrinth labyrinth labyrinth).

It's made in the USA! (Score one for the home team!)

Problem solving skills and motor skills, all in one game.

It's durable. Mongoosine has mad skillz when it comes to breaking things. All she's managed to do is scratch the bottom of the balance peg using it on the rough sidewalk. Unlike her bunk bed rail, she hasn't broken it.

It's wooden. I don't know why, but wooden toys make me much happier than plastic ones.

The not so awesome:

It's hard for me to keep track of the 3 wooden balls which come with it.

Overall, I like it. I think the Labyrinth Balance Board is a good option for the kids. It's recommended for ages 5 and up, and since my 10 year old has been caught enjoying it, then I take the "and up" seriously, which is nice, since so often the "and up" really means "anyone older wouldn't be amused," but this time, "and up" means "your ten year old will play with this too, and possibly your teen." Today she says that she thinks that it's probably better suited for kids a little younger than her, but I'll be shocked if she doesn't drag it out again later this evening. Ah tweens.

Want one?

Buy it. You can order your very own Labyrinth Balance Board from Challenge & Fun or Museum Tour.

Win it. That's right. You can win one, just in time for Yulemas! Christanzaa? Kwanakuah? You get the idea.

Rob from Challenge & Fun has generously offered to give one of my readers their very own Labyrinth Balance Board, just enter below.

Mandatory Entry: Head over to Challenge & Fun and tell me what other of their awesome products is your favorite. Leave a comment letting me know which it is. If you don't do this, you can't win. You need to include your email address in your comment if it isn't publicly attached to your blogger account (username [at] host [dot] com or something similar). If I can't contact you, you can't win.

Extra Entries, because we all like to get extra entries.

1. Follow my blog and leave a comment letting me know you do.

2. Follow Challenge & Fun on twitter and me, and tweet the giveaway up to once daily. Leave a comment with the permalink to your tweet. Tweet MUST include a link back to this giveaway, and mention @ChallengeandFun. (For permalink- click the date/time below your tweet and it will take you to the page with the permalink as the URL)

3. Blog about this giveaway linking back to it and Challenge & Fun. Leave a comment with the link of your specific blog post.

4. Grab my button and put it on your sidebar, then leave a comment letting me know where I can find it.

Fine Print: Contest open through 12/2/09. Winner will be selected using a random number generator. Winner will be emailed and announced on this blog. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or another winner will be selected via some bizarre and creative method like competitive haiku. Don't make me get creative.

Giveaway open to US residents only. Sorry Canada, it's bulky.

Disclosure: My family received a free balance board for the purposes of this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

Why so quiet?

If you're wondering why I've been a little quiet lately, wonder no longer.
We've been gearing up for a babywearing event in December, which means lots of babywearing, and less time blogging.
Looking for a guide to an UnEvil Guide to Holiday Gifting? That's coming soon too.
Shameless self-promotion: I'm still looking for sponsors for both my babywearing event and my UnEvil Guide to Holiday Gifting. If you'd like to sponsor, email me!
I'm planning some great babywearing reviews, at least one giveaway, babywearing artwork, and a tutorial or two.
For my UnEvil Guide to Holiday Gifting, I'll be waxing enthusiastic about some eco-friendly, developmentally relevant, creative, non-toxic,WHAM made, US made, free trade and/or ethical options for gift giving.
So be sure to pop back by every so often. I'll be going UnEvil shortly before Thanksgiving, if all goes as planned!

Six Months

Six months of exclusive breastfeeding, on cue, with the recent addition of a few tastes of Mama's banana.

Six months of cloth diapers.

Six months of co-sleeping.

Six months of baby-wearing.

Six months, 20 lbs, 28" of love.