Giveaway Winner Take 2: Welcome to Motherhood Prize Pack

Thank you to all who entered the Welcome to Motherhood Prize Pack giveaway here at FormulaMom! You helped make my very first blog event a major success! Don't forget there are still two giveaways open for the cloth diapering mamas (or dads!) so check out the Pooters and Zookies giveaways! They are now open until 5/20!

But on to the important stuff! The original winner failed to confirm the win within 48 hours so I had to draw again! The winner of the Welcome to Motherhood prize pack is...

mummytotwoboys!

Congratulations! Check your email shortly for more information! You have 48 hours to confirm your win and provide your information or another winner will be drawn.

Review: Kidsbooks

As I have mentioned a few times, I started my teaching career teaching first grade and taught it for four years before moving into technology. As a result, I have a love for children's books. As a kid, I loved book fair week and I loved when my teacher's sent home the monthly book order! I also spent hours in book stores and the library! My mother taught me the habit of reading before bed when I was very little and I have done it ever since. It's a habit I plan to pass on to W as well. As a result of my love for reading and books, I was so excited when Kidsbooks contacted me to be a sponsor of the I Love My Mommy Mother's Day event. I love sharing books with people and I was even more blessed to be asked to review four books from Kidsbooks!

Kidsbooks publishes fiction and non-fiction children's books and all titles are educationally sound and incorporate "fun" as a learning tool. I really appreciate this philosophy as it is similar to the one I had when I was teaching first grade. Now that I teach technology, the fun seems to be built in for most students, but in the general education classroom it can be a challenge to make certain necessary activities fun for some students. This is why I love the mission of Kidsbooks, where they believe that learning can be fun!


Kidsbooks is provided a wonderful book pack that included 4 titles for my I Love My Mommy Mother's Day Event. The books included in the package were Puppies Count, Rise & Shine, Search & Find: Winter, Spring, Summer, & Fall, and Search & Find: People, Places, & Things! We were lucky enough to have have the opportunity to review all 4 titles as well.

Puppies Count teaches kids to count as they read about puppies playing and getting into trouble! The rhyming text and wonderful illustrations will keep your child engaged in the story!

Rise & Shine follows the animals of the farm as they wake up for the day. This book also has wonderful rhyming text and beautiful illustrations. It features a variety of baby animals and if your child is anything like W, he already loves animals!

Search & Find: Winter, Spring, Summer, & Fall is one of the wonderful Search & Find titles offered by Kidsbooks. I love the vocabulary building possibilities of these titles. Search & Find: Winter, Spring, Summer, & Fall explores the four seasons and introduces children to the vocabulary associated with each season and other objects in the scene. The brightly colored illustrations are spectacular. These books will be good for younger children who are just learning new words up through the older preschoolers who can then search for the objects in each illustration!

Search & Find: People, Places, & Things is another wonderful Search & Find title. It explores familiar settings such as rooms within a house and introduces vocabulary for each setting. It also features animal characters which are a hit with most children!

My first impressions of our Kidsbooks books were that they are generously sized! I prefer children's books to be larger in size because then the illustrations are generally larger as well. I have run into some books that are large and end up having a lot of text and smaller illustrations, but this was not the case with our books from Kidsbooks! The books are large in size and the illustrations are large, filling the entire page on each page. In the Search & Find books there illustrations are brightly colored and labeled with bold print. In Puppies Count and Rise & Shine, the illustrations fill the pages and are very realistic which I appreciate since the stories are about animals. These books made a wonderful first impression on me.

The Search & Find books will be amazing when W is older as they will definitely help develop vocabulary and will also grow with him. For now he has enjoyed chewing on the cover and pages as it is like a giant board book. I’ve enjoyed going through the book and pointing out a few parts of each illustration and naming them for him. In the future, he will be able to do the searching himself and I think it is something he will enjoy. Students in my first grade classes always enjoyed my I Spy books and these have a similar feel although the reader is searching for more than just the matching picture. The read is also looking for the label. I like the idea that it will help W identify matching text. These books will definitely be on his shelf for a few years! They feel durable enough to last that long and perhaps they will even last through multiple children! That will be the true test of a good book!

W enjoyed looking through both of the Search & Find books and was actually interested for a very good stretch of time. He is in the stage where anything around him easily steals his attention but the books were large enough and colorful enough to allow us to sit together for almost ten minutes looking at them both. I hope these become some of his favorite books but only time will tell.

We’ve also read Puppies Count and Rise & Shine a few times now. These books do not feature the board book type pages but they do feature very simple text with illustrations that are more realistic than cartoonish. Although I don’t mind books where the characters are drawn in more of an animated style, it is nice to have some where the animals resemble what they really look like. This will help W identify them in real life in the future.

W enjoyed Puppies Count because he seems to be interested in any of our books that feature dogs. He will also stare at our dogs when they walk by or come near him. When we’re holding him, he will do anything to turn to see the dogs if one of them is anywhere nearby. Who cares about Mommy when Toby and Murray are around! I try not to take it personally because our dogs are pretty cute. But back to the point... W has sat through Puppies Count more than a few times now and we have made it through the entire story each time. He does try to eat the book so I have to be careful to protect the pages but that’s not a surprise!

Both Puppies Count and Rise & Shine have simple text that will be wonderful when W is older and reaches the beginning reader stage. The text is mostly made up of sight words (words used most often in the English language) that are on my school district’s Kindergarten and 1st Grade sight word lists. This means these books will be books that W will be able to read early on and find success. If there is one thing I’ve learned in teaching children to read it’s that a feeling of success can make a child’s confidence soar. Once they have the confidence and believe in themselves as readers, they are ready to go! I feel that these two titles from Kidsbooks will definitely benefit W in this way and I’m excited to have them as part of his library!

I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to review these titles from Kidsbooks and I would recommend them to anyone who is looking for some quality, affordable children’s books. They are durable and engaging, which are two extremely important factors when buying books for children. Trust me, you don’t want to be breaking out the packing tape for book repair too often. I can tell you that from experience! I don’t think we’ll be needing much repair work on these books even if W is still reading them when he is 5 or 6!

Making the Move

After the blogger blackout of the past few days, I wanted to let everyone know that I am working on making the move to WordPress. The web address for FormulaMom will stay the same so it shouldn't be a big deal for my lovely readers, but I wanted to let you know! Any good blogging thoughts you can send my way will be appreciated! I'm excited about the change but nervous as well!

Wordless Wednesday: The Effects of Babywearing

I hadn't worn him in awhile and was worried about the fact that he weighs 20 pounds now, but it was great! My back didn't bother me at all and after half an hour of looking around the arboretum, he was out like a light!

Trying to get in the top 50!
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Giveaway Winner: Welcome to Motherhood Prize Pack

Thank you to all who participated in the I Love My Mommy Mother's Day event here at FormulaMom! It was truly an amazing experience (my first big blog event) and it couldn't have been a success without you! The winner of the Welcome to Motherhood Prize Pack is...

elegantdaily!

Congratulations! Check your email for more information! You have 48 hours to confirm your win and provide your information or another winner will be drawn.

Once again, thank you so much to everyone who participated! It couldn't have happened without you! I'm excited about the next event in the works at FormulaMom... Summer Fluffin', a cloth diaper event! In the meantime, don't forget that there are still two chances to win in honor of all the cloth diapering mothers out there! Check out the Pooters and Zookies giveaways for more chances to win!

Why God Made Moms

I know this has been floating around for quite some time and I first read it as a teacher and not as a mother. This weekend I received it from someone and read it for the first time as a mother. It is even more amusing now!

WHY GOD MADE MOMS

Answers given by 2nd grade school children to the following questions:

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my mom just the same like he made me. He just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's mom like me.

What kind of a little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer?
3. Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my mom eats a lot
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home and dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller and stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friends.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine..

What does your mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.


I cannot wait until I get to hear all of the funny things W says. I enjoy spending my days with my students as they often make me laugh, but it will be so wonderful to hear my own son come up with things like these! For now I enjoy his smiles, giggles, and squeals because before I know it these days will be gone and he will find his voice. Then I will be living in my own edition of the funny things kids say!

My First Mother's Day! How I Became a Mother!

This time last year, I just discovered that I was pregnant about a month earlier so I was riding on the high of the little speck inside of me. I was also worrying about everything that could happen and praying that all would be well. I was excited and nervous all at the same time! We had just seen our little man for the first time a few days before Mother's Day! Here is my first picture of him!

It was an amazing week in my life as it was when everything became much more real for me and it was exciting! We started thinking of names and I started shopping for cloth diapers. I had some very strange dreams and started counting down the days until my next ultrasound which was the anatomy scan! I remember wondering if we would have a little boy or a little girl. People would ask me what I thought I was having and I would never really commit. I will be honest and admit that I was hoping for a girl because I want one of both but wanted to get a girl. But I am pretty sure that I knew it was going to be a boy! Now I cannot imagine having any baby other than my amazing W! The day we found out he was a boy it was a good thing we wanted to know because the money shot was the first thing he flashed for us! Here is a picture (no, not the money shot) from the anatomy scan. It was my second shot (well from the second set of photos) of my sweet son.

At my next visit a month later, I got to see W again because he hadn't cooperated for the views of his head at the first scan. I was more than willing to take another look! Although I will admit that they tech got a photo of his ear that made it look huge and I got a little worried that he would be born with giant ears. Ah, the things we worry about when we're pregnant! I got this great shot that we dubbed his "Halloween" photo!

11 weeks later (and a week early) W made his debut in our lives and I could not believe the feelings that rushed through me. I wasn't sure how I would react. I thought I might cry (J sure did) but I didn't. I was so exhausted all I could do was hold him in my arms and stare at him. He was mine. I had been waiting for 39 weeks to see his face and I had him in my arms. It was an amazing moment and one I will never forget.

I had become a mother 39 weeks earlier but that night I became his mother and that is who I will be forever. It is an amazing thing to think about each day. Today I spent the day with my wonderful husband J, my amazing son W, and my inspirational mother. It was her first Mother's Day as Grambo (yes, the "Rambo of Grandmothers") and we all shared a beautiful day together at the local arboretum. I am truly blessed on this wonderful day, my first Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!!