The Mom Crowd

1. A five-point harness strap system that won’t tighten small enough to keep your baby from squirming out and climbing on to the tray.

2. A buckle that hurts your hands when you squeeze the sides to open it.

3. A comfy and cushy seat cover that is Dry Clean Only and requires you to hand scrub every dried spot of sweet potato.

4. A space large enough that your baby can recline and not be able to reach on top of the tray.

5. A tray that is twice the size of your kitchen sink and spills water on your floor every time you clean it.

6. A chair that takes up at least 3 square feet of your limited kitchen floor space.

7. Corners and crevices that attract every crumb and piece of bread to be eaten by baby at the next meal.

8. A seat cover that is difficult to remove and place back in with buckles too large to squeeze through the tiny slots in the cover.

9. A tray with shallow sides that allows your baby to drop food on the floor when they were trying to pick up the food off the tray.

10. An aesthetically pleasing seat that matches your kitchen but makes feeding and cleaning a dreaded experience.

Last week I left my daughter alone strapped in her high chair for a minute. When I came around the corner I saw her sitting on top of her tray. I have wanted a new booster seat and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I purchased a Safety 1st Recline and Grow 5-Stage Feeding Seat and I love it!

Even though it doesn’t have a 5-point harness it is small enough to keep Ace in her seat. Also, I need to be careful to pick Ace up as soon I pull out the tray, because she leans forward when I pull the tray out. The new booster seat is so easy to keep clean.

I had no clue what to look for when I registered for a high chair. I assumed that all high chairs were the same and I picked the one that matched closest to my kitchen colors. Boy was I wrong!

Here are some high chair buying tips from Consumer Reports.

Do you use a high chair or booster seat? Which one do you use? How would you advise a new mom that is shopping for a high chair?

My little girl celebrated her first birthday with a party at our house this weekend. So I decided I should probably finish putting her nursery together, you know, so I can show it off to all my family and friends. Luckily Ace can’t talk yet and complain about my wall color choice or beg for Dora posters. The nursery still isn’t complete. There are two blue v-shaped floating shelves that I am waiting for my husband to hang.

We started the nursery when I was pregnant. We didn’t find out the gender so we wanted a gender-neutral room. Also, we are planning a second child some time soon and I didn’t want to re-theme the same room for the second one. I am way too cheap frugal that way. We chose a light lime/apple color for walls. We matched the wall paint to a pair crib sheets we picked out. Then anchored the room with white furniture and blue and orange accents.

The Room

* Diaper Champ! love it. Gift from baby shower
* White Dresser from Ikea – $69.99
* Changing pad from a baby shower gift.
* Oatmeal laundry basket – Gift from baby shower
* Dump truck from my niece.
* Orange hanging storage unit from Ikea – $4.99. This is a great place to store all those bazillion stuffed animals that we receive as gifts. Really, how many stuffed animals does a girl need?
* Dimmer on the wall from Lowe’s – $20
* Art by me.

* Crib from Babies R’ Us – A gift from my in-laws and Uncle at my baby shower!
* Sage Gerber Crib Sheet from Babies R’ Us – $7.99
* White Dust Ruffle from Babies R’ Us – $17.99
* Art by me.

* Do you see the strange blue things in the corner? Those are the two blue wall shelves from Ikea that need to be hung – $6.99 each.
* Hedda Multicolor curtains from Ikea – $29.99
* Bright orange sheers from Ikea – $14.99 for a pack of two
* Curtain hardware from Ikea – $3.99 for rod – $1.49 for hardware.
* Marley the monkey and stroller were gifts.

* White bookshelf is a hand-me-down from my friend, Barb.
* Blue storage bins from Ikea – $1.49 each.
* Books, frame, and stuffed animals were gifts.

The Closet

* Large storage boxes from Ikea – $6 for pack for 2.
* Small boxes for clothes (notice: they are all labeled!) – $3.99 for 2.

Lighting

* Magnesium Spotlight System from Ikea – $69.99. I saw a picture of a nursery with cool track lighting and found this alternative. They were really easy to install. We also added a dimmer. I also like how the S-shape mimics the pattern in the curtains.

Art

* Canvases were a total of $35. I can’t remember. Brushes – $3. I used leftover wall paint for the paint. I am not an artist and this was my first attempt. I used to see abstract pieces of art and think, “I could do that!” Now I know why art costs so much. I didn’t have the right paint and my skills simply aren’t the best. I did these really quickly last week.

* The circle art is inspired by Essence-Chocolate and Essence-Blue from art.com.

* The alphabet piece highlights my daughter’s initials in orange. I remember seeing a website where they would create an artwork piece with your child’s name highlighted in the alphabet. It just worked out the A,C, and E are the beginning for me.

Putting together Ace’s nursery was incredibly fun for me. Can you tell I love Ikea? Did you put a nursery together for your little one? Do you kid’s room have a color palette or theme?

We’d love to see your nursery or kid’s room – post a picture or video to your blog or to flickr or YouTube (etc) and leave a link in comments below!

Phanfare.com is a private place online to share your photos and videos with your family and friends. I was asked to review the site by Rya, a friend of MommyZabs. Being that I love testing new software and have personal opinions about friendly user interfaces I couldn’t resist checking out this new site.

Phanfare gives you 1 GB (about 1,024 MB) of free storage for your photos and videos on the site. Unlimited storage is available for $54.95 per year. I uploaded 16 photos and still have about 1,009 MB of storage left, but I am afraid that I would run out of space rather quickly. In my iPhoto I have about 14,000 photos. The free account is nice, but I feel like it is a hook to get you to buy the $55 package. Which wouldn’t be a bad deal if you wanted to spend the money. Comparatively Flickr gives you 100 MB of free space each month and only the 200 most recent photos will be displayed. A Flickr ProAccount with unlimited storage and photos displayed is $24.95 per year. Phanfare does not offer any smaller packages, but I heard that they might be changing their pricing strategy in the next few months.

My favorite feature is that I am able to highlight the photos I want to upload in my iPhoto window and then drag and drop them into my Internet browser window. I don’t have to browse and individually choose each photo to upload. Uploading 15 photos at one time took about five minutes. After every upload you do you are prompted to invite your family and friends. I found this a little annoying, but not a big deal.

Once all your photos are uploaded into an album you can rotate, fix auto levels, zoom, and revert to the original. You can also choose a photo and manually drag and drop photos in the order you want them. You can also edit your album preferences. The entire site is incredibly easy to use. The default theme to show your photos is a nice black background.

One drawback about the album is that you can only comment on the entire album, instead of an individual photo. So if you want to comment about one photo you have to describe the one photo you are commenting on.

The slideshow is very nice and easy to control. There is a menu bar that appears if you hover over the bottom of the photo. The menu bar allows you to change some of the settings. The slideshow feature of my current online photo storage site looks amateur compared to Phanfare’s slideshow.

I uploaded two small videos in my account. Phanfare automatically converts your video into Flash format to be able to be played on their site. It could take anywhere between 1 and several hours for them to finish converting your video. Even when I use Vimeo it takes them a while to convert my videos too.

Phanfare is affiliated with Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and Snapfish. It is easy to order prints of your photos. You will need an account with one of the three affiliates before you can order any photos, because it prompts you for your email address and password. You will get a great photo, because you upload the full quality of your photo. I currently upload photos at a lower resolution to be placed on a website, but they are not at a high enough resolution to print them as a 4×6. This is a great feature for family and friends to order the photos they want online (especially my mom!).

Finally, the biggest feature of Phanfare is their desktop application. It is available for both Windows and Macs. The desktop application allows you to:

* Manage your photos and videos locally while synchronizing your content to the web
* View and organize your photos at full size
* Upload large files faster and easier than on the web
* Edit and organize your photos and videos even when you are not connected to the web
* Choose from over 70 styles for your shared albums
* Add your own music to your slideshows
* Select the awesome Phanfare screensaver

You can also use the desktop application to embed photos and videos on blogs. This is important to me, because I really like the Flickr plugins on websites that give you mosaics of your photos and show your most recent photos.

There are many more features such as groups, sharing with your family and friends, and visitor reporting. The best feature is that it is private and you know who exactly is viewing your photos. There shouldn’t be any concern for having your photos stolen. You may have heard about Sweetney’s pug being used during a football game on Fox or the one where a girl’s photo was stolen from Flickr by Virgin Mobile and used in an advertisement. Some of my photos are private and I don’t want to show them to the world. Phanfare offers an intimate place online to share your photos without being completely public to the world.

Update:  

I have heard from Smug Mug that they offer a very similar service for $39.95 per year. If you want to shop around Smug Mug is another photo site to check out!

Do you use an online photo-sharing site? Which one? How do you like it? Do you have any privacy concerns?

Happy Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day I have composed a few easy things you can do to contribute to helping the earth be a little safer for our kids.

1. Next time you go to the store try buying Tide for Cold Water. Using cold water on all laundry uses less energy–thus reducing your carbon footprint. It will also save you about $65 per year on your electric bill.

2. Reuse those baby food jars! They can be used to:

• transition toddlers and preschoolers to a big girl/boy glass at the dinner table

• serve ice cream, pudding, or mouse in them for great kiddie sized portions

• organize your “junk drawer” for things like rubber bands, thumb tacks, paper clips, small watch/toy batteries, stamps

• put paints in for your budding artist to dip their paintbrush into

• catch bugs in

3. Break out those cloth napkins that you registered for at your wedding! I don’t know about you but I registered for cloth napkins and I never used them. We just went through our LAST pack of paper napkins and we are now using cloth ones. Buying or using cloth napkins reduces the use of energy and resources to make the paper napkins. You can also reuse old dishcloths and make them into cloth napkins. If you want to get creative you can assign each person in your family a colored napkin. You could also have napkin holders with each persons name on it. When the napkins get yucky enough you can throw them in the wash. They don’t have to be washed after every use!

4. Consider purchasing a reusable water bottle for every member in the family. 38 billion water bottles are put into landfills every year! A reusable water bottle will help decrease that amount. Sigg and Kleen Kanteens are great choices that are environmentally friendly and recycleable! They also make them in great kiddie sizes.

5. Turn your heat/ac up/down 1 degree. One degree won’t be that noticable and it will also reduce your energy bills and carbon footprint!

6. Arrange a Toy Swap with your other mommy friends. Toy Swaps help rid your house of clutter toys your kids have lost interest in and provide “new” toys for the kiddos to play with. It doesn’t necessarily cut down on toy clutter but it does help reduce waste from buying new toys. With 3 kids I have toys coming out of my ears. Sometimes the plastic toys make me feel like I’m going insane. I have a pile in the basement of toys that we have grown out of or have lost interest in and I am already planning on making a stop at good will or arranging a toy swap of my own!

I recently bought a book that just came out called Healthy Child, Healthy World: Creating A Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. It is a book with tons of information about making your home nontoxic, recipes for air freshener, bubble bath and pet flea repellents, green gardening, how to avoid those scary toy recalls and how to choose safer art supplies, smart choices for remodeling your home and even a shopper’s guide for quality green products, brands, stores and websites. I haven’t read it all the way through but I have read most of it and have been impressed with the helpful information in the book. One thing I appreciate about the book is that each chapter covers the impacts of our choices on the environment. I know that the idea of being green and changing family patterns and habits can be overwhelming but the book emphasizes that any choice to go greener is a step in the right direction. I think it would be impossible to overhaul everything in our lives all at once. I know in our family we are taking one step at a time and it still feels like we are doing so little. I am trusting that my small contribution combined with others contributions will help make a big impact on making the world a better place for my kids and grandkids.

Being green is definitely becoming more popular and easy to do. What kinds of green things do you do?

Don’t you love a good read? You know, a book that has you curled up on the couch so enthralled that you just want to stay on the couch in fantasy land while the kids run around and play? I love reading–and when I find a book that I don’t want to put down I rationalize my lack of desire to do anything else (pick up toys, make lunches, clear the table etc.) by reminding myself that I am setting a good example for my kids and their hopeful love of books by reading in front of them.

Random House sent us a copy of the new book The Bright Side of Disaster by Katherine Center and I was lucky enough to be the one to get the copy.

The back of the book says this:

“Very pregnant and not quite married, Jenny Harris doesn’t mind that she and her live-in fiance, Dean, accidentally started their family a little earlier than planned. But Dean is acting distant, and the night he runs out for cigarettes and doesn’t come back, he demotes himself from future husband to sperm donor.

And the very next day, Jenny goes into labor.

In the months that follow, Jenny plunges into a life she never anticipated: single motherhood. At least with the sleep deprivation, sore boobs, and fits of crying (both hers and baby’s), there’s not much time to dwell on her broken heart. And things are looking up: Jenny learns how to do everything one-handed, makes friends in a mommy group, and even gets to know a handsome, helpful neighbor. But Dean is never far from Jenny’s thought or, it turns out, her doorstep, and in the end she must choose between the old life she thought she wanted and the new life she’s been lucky to find.”

When they offered to send us the book I knew it was about a mom but after I read the back description I couldn’t wait to start reading it. As soon as I read the first 10 pages I was hooked and I read the whole thing in 2 days!

My circumstances are not the same as the main character, Jenny’s, but as a mom I found myself relating to her story in such a way that I didn’t want to put the book down. I was rooting for this new mom and her journey into motherhood. Even though I am on my third baby the newness of motherhood is fresh enough for me to enjoy reading about someone else’s journey. The plot covers pregnancy to birth, breastfeeding, figuring out how to take care of a baby AND shower at the same time and it is so real that any mom could easily put herself in Jenny’s shoes and understand what her life is like.

Yesterday, I dropped off our bumbo seat and this book to a friend of mine who has a 4 month old. I told her that I loved reading the book and I thought she might enjoy it too. I talked to her this afternoon and she had already finished the book. We chuckled at how we both devoured the book. If Katherine Center writes any more books in the future I will definitely be checking them out.

So, if you enjoy reading and want a fun book that will ingite your mommy heart I definitely recommend this book! It will warm your heart and have you remembering what those first days and months were like as a new mommy. Happy Reading!