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Ok. I admitted before to being surprised by how effectively country music could be translated to fun and interesting lullabies for little babies. However, I really did not expect Queen’s music to do the same.
I was wrong.
This was fantastic. My husband heard just a few bars of the lullaby renditions of Queen CD and yelled “awesome” from the other room. It was truly laugh-out-loud surprising and energizing at the same time. I am excited to hear they plan to do several more RockaBye renditions as well.
As before, this is a company that has taken music parents enjoy and used flutes and other quiet, soothing instruments to turn the songs into a more lullaby-like sound. It comforts the baby and entertains the parents in one go.
These are a great investment for any family, especially if you have an iPod or other MP3 player you can load the songs onto and leave playing the baby’s room. The printed material inside the CD case can even be transformed into a mobile – a nice touch for a great price.
If you want to hear Queen in a whole new way, visit RockaBye baby’s rock out site!
One of my most fabulous finds of late is the collection of vintage scarf headbands from recyclicious.com Created by a mom and NYC-trained fashion and textile designer, these headbands are the perfect solution for what I will politely call “mom hair”. What is mom hair? Um, well, it is a variety of things. It is what your hair looks like when you haven’t had time to shower for two days. It is what your hair looks like when you haven’t had time to sleep for two days. When your kids get older, it is the result of not getting to the salon as often as you used to be able to. When you get older, it is the result of changing hormones and age, both of which do a number on the thickness and resiliency of hair.
The long-term solution for mom hair? Your child’s enrollment in college.
The short-term solution? Stylish, trendy headbands made from vintage (recycled! repurposed!) materials that make even my $10 Target clearance clothes look great.
I have six of them, all of which have resisted the following encounters with toddlerhood: being pulled repeatedly, being stepped on, a chocolate milk spill, being shoved in my purse several times a day, and, yes, being slept on. They still look fabulous. If that doesn’t warrant a five star rating, I don’t know what does.
So check these items out. I am trying hard to focus on mom-invented, mom-designed, mom-created items here at EHParenting, and this is one of my favorites. They happen to be created by a fun and fabulous mom as well, which makes them even more special.
P.S. These also make a fantastic baby shower gift.
This one came to me through friends of friends, so I can take no credit for thinking it up, but it sure it worth passing along.
One of the hardest thing for pregnant ladies, especially those in their third trimester, is getting around. While some stores and restaurants have spaces dedicated to parking for pregnant mothers, I always found those a bit awkward. It turns out that if you are pregnant, you actually qualify for a temporary disabled person placard for your car. That pretty much describes the end of pregnancy, doesn’t it? Temporarily disabled from… walking, bending over, seeing your feet and all those other fun things.
Here is what you do to get the placard:
1. Download and print the Application for Disabled Person Parking Placard or Plates from the DMV website for your state. In California, it is http://dmv.ca.gov/forms/formsmost.htm. You need to check “temporary” on the form.
2. Take your paperwork to your next OB/GYN appointment for your doctor to sign it. You can even make an appointment with your general physician if you do not want to wait until your next prenatal visit.
3. For faster service, if you are a AAA member, take your signed paperwork to a local AAA office and they will process your paperwork and give you the temporary placard on the spot! Otherwise, you have to either mail it to DMV or go into DMV to process it.
All of this can actually be done in just one day, believe it or not. It is especially useful for pregnant ladies who already have small children, since limiting the time in the parking lot is key when you cannot really lift your toddler or preschooler anymore.
So do yourself a favor and go fill out some paperwork!
(Hat tip to Jen at mypeopleconnection.com for this one)
If you have spent anytime perusing some of the EHP Stores, you will have seen me rave about the Miracle Blanket wrap for swaddling babies. However, I have to admit that I have found one now that I might like even better. The BabyBonkie wrap is wonderful and absolutely beautiful. The primary reason? It lasts so so so much longer. Many babies find swaddling to be comfortable well beyond the physical limits of most swaddling blankets; the Baby Bonkie is the first I have seen that is truly able to accommodate a baby from newborn (7 pounds) to 5 months of age.
Also, as much as I adore the Miracle Blanket, it is a bit complicated to use, which doesn’t always work so well with sleep deprivation. The Baby Bonkie is more intuitive, and comes in a wider variety of thicknesses and patterns. If you have an especially cold room, the lined Baby Bonkie is a fantastic choice. I gave it a test run on my 3 month old niece and she absolutely loved it.
If your child responds well to swaddling, the BonkieBag may be the next logical step. Completely free of any dyes or chemicals, the organic cotton Bonkie Bag is designed for babies from 6-12 months of age. This is a a great idea for older children since it allows them to move more, while keeping them warm enough to put the room at a more ideal temperature (most doctors recommend a room temperature of 65-70 for ideal sleep, which requires some warm dressing in order to be comfortable). I gave this one a trial on my 12 month old nephew, and it also worked like a charm.
Of course, both the Baby Bonkie and Bonkie Bag come in a wide variety of hip colors and patterns, which always makes baby gear more fun. But the most important contribution they make is to helping you swaddle your child, something proven to reduce SIDS and calm newborns. I am a huge fan of swaddling, and any thing that makes it easier and more stylish to swaddle a new baby is worth the investment!
If you are interested in buying a Baby Bonkie or Bonkie Bag, or just want to learn more about them, check out the details at http://www.babybonkie.com
I’ve been doing a lot of product reviews lately, in part because I have been inundated with items that people have sent me to look over. The book by Ricki Lack and Abby Epstein pictured here, entitled “Your Best Birth”, took me a while to get through. This is not a bad thing – the book is just very dense and full of information.
I have read about 100+ parenting and pregnancy books at this point, and the second half of this one had some information new to me. The first half is largely exposition, setting up the birth options that are out there, explaining the trend towards hospital stays and C-sections, and describing other birthing options. I liked the way the information was presented there because it was not pushy (a rare thing in pregnancy books), but it wasn’t necessarily anything new. What *was* unique was the second half of the book that went into great detail on the practices and expertise of midwives and doulas.
I think a lot of people are interested in using a midwife and a doula, but do not necessarily know exactly what they do, how it is different from a doctor, how having a doctor can complement their work, and what else the midwives and doulas bring to the birth experience that will not be there if they are not there. The emphasis is my own, because that is truly the point: midwives and doulas bring something to the birth process that is not replicated in a hospital/doctor/nurse setting. That is what you are paying them for – that extra dimension.
This distinction is a fine one, but important – I think that it is a mistake to cast midwives and doulas as “alternatives to doctors”. This book does not do that, and in fact, they excel at incorporating throughout the text different tips and tricks from midwives and doulas that really emphasize how unique and useful they are. This focus on providing examples and details is the great strength of Your Best Birth and its unique contribution to the pregnancy literature field. My only criticism is that I felt there were a couple moments where the medical risks of home births were downplayed or left out of a storyline. This book tries to have a documentary feel to it, since it is the byproduct of a documentary on birthing in the United States, and – for me at least – that raised my expectations about the balance of information vs. interpretation that I expected to see. For some of the home birth stories, the glossing over of some of the medical realities deviated from the book’s more objective tone.
That criticism aside, this book has a friendly, conversational manner that presents some new and much-needed information on midwives and doulas that is worth reading. Available on Kindle as an e-book or as a regular book on Amazon, it is a good investment for first-time moms and moms who are wanting to understand how to make a second or third birth experience a little more customized that their first.
The most interesting aspect of reviewing products is all the things I encounter that I did not know that I need until I review them.
Imag-inations.com Designs sent me several examples of their products, and about halfway through the samples of the various photo cards, birth announcements, greeting cards, and thank you cards I realized that the stationary fanatic in me was trumping the Internet geek in me and that I now *needed* some. For what I wasn’t sure, since it is May and I am not getting married, having a baby, baptizing a baby, thanking anyone for a major gift, or celebrating a major holiday anytime soon. But I knew I needed them.
I tend to think of the Internet as my personal little ESP device, by which I beam messages into the brains of those to whom I am close. Doesn’t that sound like a loving thing to do? Anyway, my weird analogies aside, I see the Internet as a nifty way to get information out there to family and friends, and so I tend to *not* send Christmas cards or other communications that go in the mail because the Internet is so much easier and cheaper.
However, in doing so, I am missing out on the fantastic tactile experience that is great stationary and great design. Imag-inations are both. All you do is send them the photo or photos you want to use (and there are great tips on the site about how to take the right kind of photo), and they send you back (for a fee of course – this is a mom-owned business) cards that knock the socks off of snapfish or kodak or any of those do-it-yourself photo card sites. These things are amazing.
The full pricing system is here, but I can sum it up for you fairly quickly: even though these things are customized, they are still cheaper than Papyrus. Papyrus stationary stores are my addiction, especially once Target starting carrying their brand. A box of Papyrus thank you cards is more per card than these totally customized, heavy card-stock photo cards with the message, colors, images, and layout that you want. For wedding and baby shower thank you notes, in particular, that is a great deal.
So go check them out! I love high-quality work, and these designs are fantastic. You can also email the owner – Jen – using this link. Let your stationary addiction run free 
I’ve blogged before about the services offered at our sister site, Custom Registries, where you can have an up-to-date, in-the-know, all-in-one baby registry created for you at one or multiple stores for about the price of a baby blanket.
There is no better time to take advantage of this offer than now, because Amazon.com is hosting a huge giveaway for anyone who creates a registry on their site. Worth more than $3000, the prizes are actually stuff I would want (as opposed to many giveaways that list random stuff no one really needs).
So if you are pregnant and could use $3000 in free stuff, get in touch with Custom Registries or go check out the links on amazon for yourself.
Tired of listening to the same loop of nursery rhymes and kids songs? Check out this set of CDs made by the Hushabye Baby company. If you are any kind of a music fan, these CDs are a great treat. Touted as “lullaby renditions of country music favorites,” these CDs are really quite pleasant for adults to listen to, and the music is paced and performed to still function as a soothing device for babies and children.
They are also amusing. Hearing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” done in lullaby form almost made me laugh out loud – it was so unexpected. And let’s face it, if you are listening to these in the middle of the night with a small baby, it is nice to be surprisingly and pleasantly amused.
Most of all, I think these CDs would make a fantastic baby shower gift – especially for parents who are music fans. You do not really have to be into country music to enjoy these – it is just nice to hear a tune in lullaby form that is a little more sophisticated. Any parent with an hear for music will appreciate that respite. Want to try before you buy? You can sample several songs on the site – just click here to try out the music.
The CD covers include cute characters and some fun recipes as well, but I really think the value lies in the music. I love the fact that in our generation, market forces, and market-oriented parents, are starting to create things that use the talents and education of moms and dads to make parenting easier. This music is a great example of that kind of ingenuity.
If you are interested, check out the Hushabye Baby website. They sell eight different CDs on the site, including renditions of Vince Gill, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Carrie Underwood, Johnny Cash, Goerge Strait, Rascal Flatts, and Patsy Cline. You’ll be glad you did.
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