Zum Balance Bike Review and Giveaway!!

 

I have had a Zum Balance Bike in my garage for months and I have been dying to give it to Penelope!  Her birthday finally arrived last week (11.11.11) and we got to give it to her.

 

We set up all her presents and ballons in the living room, so that when she walked out of our bedroom it was first thing she saw.  Her little face was so cute, she was still sleepy, but excited.


She immediately went to the bike and said "bike!!"  She climbed up on it and even on the lowest setting she is still a little short for it yet.  She is in the 97 percentile for height, so I thought for sure she would be tall enough.   It's gonna be like waiting to be tall enough to ride a ride a Disney!!

 

We also got her a Little Nutty bike helmet.  I did some research and these seemed to be the best on the market safety wise and style wise.  Which, ahem, is just as important to me as safety.   She has recently has started to take notice to polka dots, so when she opened it up, she immediately said "polka dots!"

 

We will push her around on it till she is tall enough and she loves to do that.  Mr. Safety, aka, my husband, thought it was necessary for her first ride to be in the backyard with grass to protect her if she fell. 

 

 

 

But the next day, Grandpa thought she was ready for the open road.

 

Remember this dress? It was the very first refashion I did for her, out of an old blouse of mine.  It was HUGE when I made it and now it fits.  *Tear*

 

I first found out about this bike and company from our friends in California.  Their son, now 4, has had one since he was 2.  When we visited with them this summer, Penelope freaked her freak over his bike.  They fought over it and she wanted to play it with all the time.


So I was over the moon excited when ZUM Balance Bike sent us one to review.


As I got to know the company and owner through doing some freelance marketing work for them, I admire the product even more.  I have a soft spot in my heart for entrepreneurs.


The company was started by a guy named Todd Mains, he had idea for the ZUM Balance Bike when he was teaching his own kids how to ride a bike. 


Like most kids they started on a bike with training wheels and eventually learned how to pedal and steer.  What they did not learn was how to balance.   


When he took the training wheels off they kind of had to start over because the kids were so focused on trying to balance, that steering and pedaling suddenly became more difficult.  


So he came up with a design for a bike without pedals and the seat low enough for kids to use their feet to push off the ground.  His then 2.5 year old, started riding the first prototype and loved it, quickly learning how to steer and balance at the same time.  


Just before turning 4 the same kid jumped on a regular pedal bike and took off down the street without any coaching or running along holding the seat.  


So....would YOU like a Zum Balance Bike AND a Little Nutty Helmet for your little one?  Well, read on folks, you are in luck!



MANDATORY ENTRY:


You must be a Zum Balance Bike Facebook fan to participate.


EXTRA ENTRIES:


Must include email address if not listed in profile. Each entry must be a separate comment in the comment section.



* Post about this Giveaway on Facebook and tag Mama and Baby Love (hit the @ and type Mama and Baby Love)


* Follow Me on Twitter

Good luck everyone! Giveaway will run until 12.1.11! I will use random.org generator to pick a winner and will email the winner and announce it here on the blog. The winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be announced.


DISCLAIMER: I was not paid for this post.  Thank you Zum Balance Bike and Little Nutty for allowing me to review your products and for the awesome giveaway. If you are interested in having me do a review and giveaway for your business or product, or about my affordable advertising pricing, send me an email at mamaandbabylove@gmail.com

Full disclosure, Zum Balance Bike is a client of mine and I handle their social media presence and online promotions.  BUT ya'll know me, I tell it like it is, and I will only promote a product or company that I am passionate about and that meets my level of integrity and value.





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Slow Cooker Freezer Meal: Fall Chili

Recognize that bowl?  It is the Tommee Tippee Explora bowl and easi--mat bowl that I gave away on the MBL Facebook page last week.  I hope to do some more exclusive giveaways just for my Facebook "likers" so if you are not there yet, get thyself to Facebook!


Tommee Tippee also has a cool new digital storybook feature on their site called The Day Baby Was Born, I can't wait to try out for baby number 2.


I liked these bowls for when Penelope eats soup, or in this case chili, since it keeps the bowl in place via a suction cup type thing. She still makes a mess, because she wants to do everything herself, but this eliminates the possibility of the bowl being flung across the table and chili ending up on my curtains.  

I have been making chili since college.  It was one of the very first things I learned how to make.  I did not grow up cooking, so when I got to college I had no idea how to feed myself anything other than pre-made, packaged foods.  


To remedy that, I hired Jill Welch, a personal chef (aka the Kitchen Goddess and also a home birth midwife) and she gave me a few private cooking lessons.   


I have changed her recipe over the years and it has morphed into what is below.  I usually only make it once a year on Halloween.

1 medium onion
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
3 large garlic cloves
2 lbs ground beef
4 cups of kidney beans
4 cups of pinto beans
2 cans crushed tomatoes
3 bay leaves
salt
chili powder 
cilantro


Soak beans overnight.  Chop all veggies.  Add meat, then veggies on top, into slow cooker.  Cook on low for 8 hours.  


*This makes a ton of chili.  As you can see, it fills my 6 quart slow cooker up, which is great, because that means lots of chili to put in the deep freezer!


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The Luminous Energy Field

The Great Migration (details) © 2007 Melinda Allec

Every two years I have to take continuing education courses for my massage therapy license.  I took an energy healing workshop with Susana Sori of SpiritUnleashed this summer and LOVED it. It focused on supporting others through their final rite of passage, death.    I feel so grateful to have access to the information she shared.  It was a life changing weekend.  If you are local, she has one coming up in January.

Susana is an amazing woman, a wealth of information and someone I look up to.  You can learn more about Susana here, here and here.

I am so excited to bring you a guest post from her.  Remember when I was saying in my What Is Energy Healing post, that I would go into more detail about what your energy field is and how it works?  Well, hear ya go!

People often ask me what I do. I work with the human Luminous Energy Field. It is a big title for something that we are all very familiar with: It is our personal energetic space.

The Luminous Energy Field is the energetic space that surrounds our physical body, and it is were we have a sensorial awareness of our world. 

Through this Field we notice someone sitting behind us at the movies, or we feel crowded and uncomfortable when people get too close to us. 

I remember in the 70's, we coined a term that describes our awareness of it. We used to say, 'Give me some space', or 'I need my space.'

The Field surrounds and envelops our physical body and is perceived as a translucent, multi-colored bubble of light and energy...like an egg that is standing on its smaller point.  It is as high and as wide as your outstretched arms can reach, all around you, and goes into the earth about foot beyond the base of our feet.  Our Field is a reservoir of vital force, a sea of living energy, indispensable to our health and well-being.

The Luminous Energy Field also tends to collect and store our emotional baggage: our past hurts, wounds, negative impressions, fears, and other results of our ‘less fortunate’ daily confrontations with others. 

When we accumulate too much baggage in our Field, we tend to feel weak, tired, confused, ungrounded, or just 'not feel right in our skin'. 

We may feel heavy, or sense that something is missing or holding us back.

Our energy body, which also includes our aura and chakras, holds the consequences of these discordant experiences and injuries. 

At the physical level, we carry the effects of these non-resonant experiences in the form of injuries, illnesses and the non-optimal functioning of our organs, physiology and the systems of the body.

When we do not clear our emotional baggage from our Field, it is like someone who goes on a trip, and never puts down their baggage. 

If they take it everywhere they go, then carrying their baggage takes a heavy toll on their energy and on their good state. Their baggage interferes with their trip.

It is truly important to clear our Field by letting go of these non-coherent signatures that we tend to carry around, because this baggage pulls us towards being reactive, or avoidance or just not feeling 'right'. 

These signatures not only hold us back, but also hold back our joy and aliveness.

We can ensure our health and extend our active healthy years by replenishing this essential vital fuel for our life.

My sessions are like a garage sale, where you let go of what you no longer need. 

The benefit? You get something back for the effort: you feel reborn, lighter, stronger, and, have more room to be truly present for the joy in your life, your relationships, and yourself!

Text is copyright © 2011, Susana Sorí. All rights reserved.

Susana offers a number of services, in-person or by phone, to help you release old emotional scars, effectively clear your field and to rebalance your energetic state. She also offers courses and workshops, both in-person and online, that support transformation and growth. You can contact Susana at susana@spiritunleashed.com. You may also visit one of her websites:www.spiritunleashed.com or www.hrshaman.com

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Recycle, Reuse Refashion: Infinity Scarf for Mama

While I was making some new scarves for Penelope, I did a scarf refashion for myself.


I have had this big, chunky scarf for almost 10 years and I love it. It keeps me so warm!  But it was huge and it had some stains on the ends of it.  


So I cut off the ends, and I used a scarf that I already have as an example, to know how short to cut it.  If you were to cut out a piece from a yard of fabric, you would do a 12 to 15 x 24 rectangle piece and sew the short ends together

When I had my basic rectangle shape, I sewed the end pieces together and ta da!  Chunky, knit, Infinity scarf for Mama! 


Please forgive this horrible picture. My husband has been out of town for weeks and this is what I am reduced to, in order to get blog photos. If you wonder why I haven't done a Mama yoga post in a while, this is why!  I am giving Penelope a digital camera for Christmas, so maybe she will be able to take pictures of me soon!

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Over Mothering

This is a concept that came into my consciousness this summer.  I had a very stressful period this summer, in my professional life, that all started because I spoke up and said, you know, "this situation is not working for me anymore."


At the same time that was going on, the urge to night wean my almost 2 year old daughter, Penelope, and the desire to start creating some boundaries was beginning to peak.  It was the same feeling of "this is not working for me anymore" but like with the other situation, it was taking me a long time for me to articulate my thoughts and have the courage to speak up and follow through.


I have a hard time, sometimes, when I am listening to messages from my intuition/higher self, or whatever you want to call it, deciding whether they are coming from a victim/fear place or healthy/whole place. 


So sometimes it takes me a long time to act till I am clear.  And when I am really unclear about what is going on, why I am feeling the way I am or why things are happening a certain way in my life, I make an appointment with an energy healer.  A lot of energy healers are also intuitives or psychics and can give a little guidance on the situation.


I think it is really interesting, when you are going through some sort of Journey or Ordeal , you can see it manifested or playing out in multi-dimensional ways or layers in your life.


Anyway, after I finally got up the courage to night wean Penelope, with the help of an energy healer to make it all clear, I realized I had been the realm of over mothering and my hesitation about night weaning her was my resistance to change and let go. 


I was also resentful of having to nurse her at night and get up so many times for the last two years.  I was exhausted and not taking care of myself.  I knew things were out of balance but I wasn't sure how to get them back on track without loosing my foundation of attachment parenting values.

Before this summer, I didn't think it was possible to over mother.  But after re-reading Louise Hay's book, You Can Heal Your Life, and paying attention to where she believes that breast cancer is a physical manifestation of resentment and anger at yourself for over mothering your children, I realize that over mothering is very possible, especially if you are devoted, attached parent. 


I have been and still am, a huge supporter of attachment parenting, but now that Penelope is almost two, I am in the process of bringing my mothering energy back into balance and creating a more healthy and age appropriate boundaries with her.  


She has been sleeping by herself for a couple of weeks now.  It has been ah. mazing.  She was totally ready and did not cry or wake up once.  I will do a post next week about the logistics, but it was a smooth process.


I am very proud of myself for allowing her some independence and letting her go a bit.   I think that part of being a good mother is knowing when to step back, give them space and let them grow up.


So I guess the other moral of the story is, that it is ok to stand up for yourself, and say "this is not working for me" and do whatever you need to do to be happy, take care of yourself and make yourself more of a priority. There is a way to do that and still honor your children and be an attached and authentic parent.


Have you ever noticed yourself in the over mothering realm?  What did you do to put things back into a healthy balance?




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10 Healthy Foods My Toddler Will Eat

Penelope is a mildly picky eater.  She wont eat everything that is put in front of her like she did when she was a baby (we did baby led weaning), but there are still plenty of healthy and nutritious things she will eat.  

Here are her Top 10:


1. Eggs.  Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, or raw in her smoothie.  She eats about 2 to 3 eggs a day.


2. Steak.  She is not a fan of chicken, but she will eat an entire steak for dinner.


3. Hotdogs.  I know this may be questionable, but I personally think it is fine.  I buy organic with no nitrates and I peel the skin.


4. Smoothies.  She gets a smoothie most every day.


5. Fruit.  She loves apples, bananas and all kinds of berries, frozen and fresh.

6. Almonds.  She likes almonds and pecans.  I soak them and dehydrate them to make them easier to digest and give her about a handful when she wants them.


7. Cheese.  I wish she would eat raw cheese, but I have not found a flavor that she likes. She will only eat mossarezzla string cheese.  Which has some protien and nutrients in it, but because it's processed it really lacks the vitamins and nutrients of raw cheese.  But I figure it's a better snack than chedder bunnies.


8. Raw Milk.  Once I night weaned her, she started requesting cow's milk.  I give her about 2 sippy cups full of raw milk a day. I made the mistake of letting her have some Horizon Organic vanilla flavored milk at Starbucks one day and now I have to put a bit of it in her raw milk.  So I mix about an ounce of the Horizon vanilla in with her cup of raw milk.


9. Fish Nuggets.  When she was  a baby she would eat baked salmon, but not anymore.  I found some wild caught, Alaskan fish nuggets that are Gluten Free and she LOVES them.


10. Brocolli. Sautéed in a ridiculous amount of butter.  She will eat like 2 cups worth when I fix it.  But it has to be fresh, she wont eat it heated up the next day.


She also loves to eat soup, and on occasion: bacon, sausage, butter straight with a spoon, yogurt bites with probiotics, guacamole (but not avocados) Go Raw granola bars (sprouted and soaked grains) and the random vegetable other than broccoli, asparagus and corn mostly, and the occasional organic Elmo cracker or veggie sticks chips.

What does your toddler's eating habits like?  Is there anything you wish he/she ate?  I wish Penelope still ate fried bananas!  Oh, and liver pate. She used to love her some liver pate, now she hates.  :(



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DIY Baby Infiniti Scarf

I was so excited when the cooler weather arrived because Penelope and I love to wear scarves.  Last year she wore a scarf of some kind, pretty much every day.  

As I started pulling out her scarves, I noticed a couple of things.  The original one I made, was a regular, long rectangular scarf.  It was from an old American Apparel scarf of mine, that I cut in half and gave to her.  But this regular scarf did not stay on well, while out playing, only her No Sew Baby Cowls did. 


But when I looked at those, I realized that with just a little bit more effort I could make a better one.  I still love these cowls, and if you don't have a sewing machine or much time, MAKE THOSE,  it is far more important for your kid to being wear a scarf than to be wearing a perfect one.  They are ridiculously easy-just cut off the bottom of an old t-shirt/dress and bam, you have a scarf.


But if you have a sewing machine, some basic skills and a few minutes, try it this way for an updated, and little bit more refined look.  


And making this version of an infinity scarves, with fabric rather than a t-shirt, gives you much more options with colors.


I also didn't like how all her No Sew Baby Cowls were different widths and lengths, some looked better on her than others because of that.  So I picked the one that fit her body best and measured it to create the new version.


The first thing I did was sew the ends together, of that very first scarf she ever wore, and turned it into an infinity scarf.  Less than 30 seconds, and DONE!  Just sew the ends together and cut off any excess fabric with pinking shears.  Then place your stitching in the back when you put on the scarf.


To make this type of scarf with fabric, cut one piece 40x10.  Then sew the short ends together to make a loop.  Pick a type of fabric that does not fray like a jersey or a flannel.  And you are done!

I also wanted to make a fuller, warmer version as well. 


I cut two rectangular pieces of red chenille, 40x10.


Then sewed them together, right sides facing, along the long side. 


Then I turned it inside out, and that gave me a long tube.  Then I sewed the ends together, to make the scarf.  


There a couple of ways to do this, I choose to do a French seam to give the scarf a finished look, but I am still a pretty basic sewer, and I am sure there is a million other ways to do it.  Here is another great Infinity Scarf (for a Mama) tutorial.


And that is it.  The whole project will take about 15 minutes, from cutting to sewing.  


Now, go make your little one a scarf and keep the flu and colds away this winter season!!

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