Product Reviews

Healthy Baby: Beef Tenderloin with Red Beets, Onions, and Ginger

/ Tracy Gromek / Leave a comment
Beef Tenderloin with Red Beets Onions Ginger

Not Your Average Baby Food: Beef Tenderloin with Red Beets, Onions, and Ginger

We’ve been doing baby led weaning since introducing solids at 7 months (although she wasn’t interested until 8 months). Although it was quite messy in the beginning and required a bath after almost every meal for the first few months, I’m glad it’s the route we chose. Now, at a little over 14 months, I can plop Faye into the Stokke Tripp Trapp, wrap a dish towel around her neck (yep, dish towels secured with a rubber band are my go-to because they catch way more bits, pieces, and juices than any bib I’ve ever come across), hand her a fork and spoon, and place her food and glass of water down on her silicone mat and she is good to go. With 12 teeth and a strong independent streak, Faye is one self sufficient little champion of an eater.

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Stories for Free Children – A Must for Any Child’s Library

/ Tracy Gromek / 1 Comment
You'll have to get a used copy. This book has been out of print for a while.

You’ll have to get a used copy. This book has been out of print for a while.

Stories for Free Children is one of the best collection of short stories, fairy tales, and fables I’ve ever come across for children. It emphasizes non-sexist, multi-racial and multicultural themes, but in a natural, non-preachy or judgmental way.

Compiled from the features in Ms. Magazine from 1972-1982, the book is divided into three sections: “Fables and Fairy Tales for Everyday Life”, “Famous Women, Found Women” and “Fun, Facts and Feelings.” In the first section you’ll “find stories that both escape the bounds of the here and now and help children cope with their own here and now with fresh insight”. In the second, stories introduce the reader to female heros both known and “almost anonymous.”  The last section “deals with everyday reality, the people children know, the circumstances of their lives, the problems they face, and what they think and feel about it.”

Totally thought this story was going to end differently...

Totally thought this story was going to end differently…

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DIY Diaper Rash Butt Spray (aka My Version of CJ’s BUTTer Spritz)

/ Tracy Gromek / 9 Comments
DIYButterSpritz

My homemade organic version of CJ’s BUTTer Spritz – I dare say it’s better since it contains aloe vera oil.

Am I weird because I love diaper changing time? I’ve used the RIE approach to diaper changing since Faye was born and it has paid off big time. It is all about slowing down and giving the child gentle, undivided, unplugged attention. Ask for their help. Ask for their permission. Sure, it may take 15 minutes, but sometimes, those 15 minutes are the highlight of my day.

I also have fallen in love with my DIY version of CJ’s BUTTer Spritz. Its antibacterial and anti-fungal properties keeps diaper rash away and softens skin. The dispensing via a spray method versus dipping your fingers into a tub keeps it sanitary and my hands goop free. Plus, it smells great. I always spray one or two pumps into my hands, rub my hands together and then put them to my nose and inhale deeply. I then give my hands to Faye to smell and she raises her eyebrows as if in agreement it smells lovely. I never actually hear her inhale though, so I whole heartedly believe she is screwing with my head.

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Should You Buy It?: Turtlemeter, the Baby Bath Floating Turtle Toy and Bath Tub Thermometer

/ Tracy Gromek / Leave a comment
TurtlemeterLong

Try to buy a baby bath thermometer that isn’t shaped like an animal or transportation device. I dare you.

Marcus and I like our space. We like it not covered in baby crap. I truly believe this is why we did not purchase a bath thermometer until Faye was 4 months old.

Up until that point we had been using an old digital candy thermometer of mine. It took a temperature, but it couldn’t be submerged in water which meant I had to continually take readings throughout bathtime. It was also off by 31 degrees so there was that added bonus of simple math equations after no sleep for the past quarter of a year all while trying to keep an infant afloat.

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