Realize

The origin of this message is unknown, but I received it in an e-mail and I wanted to share it with you guys :)

To realize the value of a sister/brother;
Ask someone who doesn't have one.

To realize the value of ten years;
Ask a newly divorced couple.

To realize the value of  four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize the value of one year;
Ask a student who has failed a final exam.

To realize the value of nine months;
Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.

To realize the value of one month;
Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby..

To realize the value of one week;
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one minute;
Ask a person who has missed the train, bus or plane.

To realize the value of one-second;
Ask a person who has survived an accident.

To realize the value of a friend or family member;
LOSE ONE.

Simply Put

I have nothing deemed ‘special’ for you today, but a simple verse that I’ve heard many many times. This specific wording is taken from Angelina Love’s blog, located here.

A native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said 'I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.' The grandson asked him, 'Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?' The grandfather answered: 'The one I feed.'

So.. So true; and so simple! Yet sometimes, we forget the simple things in life, because we find ourselves trying to make everything more complicated. Why? Who truly knows. Emotions, boredom.. I’m sure the excuses are endless. Though, that’s simply what they are – excuses. Let them go, come back to simple.

Think about it :)

Car Seat Recall

Yes, more. This one is about the harness potentially loosening during use, great. Here’s the link for you guys.

http://recall.djgusa.com/services/productrecall/canada_harn_adjust.html

Tomorrow Is Promised To No One

This is an e-mail that I received and I couldn't help but post it, as I found it so true, and I wanted to share it.

A friend of mine opened his wife's underwear drawer and picked up a silk paper wrapped package: "This," he said, "isn't any ordinary package." He unwrapped the box and stared at both the silk paper and the box.

'She got this the first time we went to New York, 8 or 9 years ago. She has never put it on, was saving it for a special occasion.

Well, I guess this is it. He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other clothing he was taking to the funeral house, his wife had just died.

He turned to me and said:
”Never save something for a special occasion. Every day in your life is a special occasion.”

I still think those words changed my life. Now I read more and clean less. I sit on the porch without worrying about anything. I spend more time with my family, and less at work. I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to, not survived through.

I no longer keep anything.
I use crystal glasses every day...
I’ll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket, if I feel like it.
If it’s worth seeing, listening or doing, I want to see, listen or do it now…
I don ‘t save my special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I want to.

T he words “Someday…” and “One Day...” are fading away from my dictionary.

I don’t know what my friend’s wife would have done if she knew she wouldn’t be there the next morning, this nobody can tell. I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends. She might call old friends to make peace over past quarrels. I’d like to think she would go out t for Chinese, her favourite food.

It’s these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come..

Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.
Live for today, for tomorrow is promised to no-one..

Zeitgeist – The Movie

Time to open your eyes. This movie is open to interpretation, but be open-minded when you watch it. It starts out slow, but I promise you it does pick up after the first initial scene.



There are two sequels to this movie. I didn’t find them as enlightening, but I did watch them. So here are the links to them for you, in case you would like to watch them as well.

Zeitgeist: Addendum (Movie 2)
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (Movie 3)

Pacifiers Recalled. Are Any Baby Products Safe?

This article is summarized from an article here.

With so many cribs and other baby products being recalled, parents no longer know what is safe to buy.

Just this week, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), announced a voluntary recall of close to 45,000 Kariño Baby Pacifiers distributed by Antonio Flores.

The Commission determined that the pacifier fails to meet federal safety standards and could pose a choking hazard.

Why are products that are sold to children not tested before they’re put on the market? And are there any products that are safe to buy these days? What’s a parent to do?

USA Today recently wrote about how the government is trying to ensure product safety and let parents know what products are okay to buy.

CPSC chair Inez Tenenbaum says the agency is working to “clean up the marketplace” and renew parents’ confidence in baby products. The agency has already established new federal standards for baby walkers and bath seats, and is formulating crib standards. They will soon set standards for high chairs, booster seats, gates, play yards, stationary activity centers, bassinets and cradles.

In 2008, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was intended to limit recalls and ensure safety for cribs and other baby gear. But, clearly, something isn’t working because it seems that every day we hear of another baby product that is being recalled. Last month, the CSPS voted to ban drop-side cribs after they were implicated in a number of infant injuries and death.

Are you concerned about all of the recent recalls of baby products?

Unclaimed Order – Up For Grabs!

This order was unclaimed (click here to view) so everything in it is up for grabs! If you want something, be sure to comment and let me know!

Here’s what was in the order and prices:

         $1.50                    $3.00                         $3.75
         (0-3M)                  (3-6M)                        (3-6M)


         $1.50                     $1.50              Free w/ Purc.         $3.75
        (3-6M)                    (0-3M)                 (3-6M)               (3-6M)



       $1.50
       (0-3M)

All of these items were claimed by this person during our 25% off sale, so you’re getting these items at a discount. To purchase, visit the order on facebook here and comment on the items you would like, or comment here and we can talk from there.

We Deliver inside Barrie (Ontario) every weekend, and Orillia (Ontario) by appointment :) And we Ship! We have our own scales and can give you a quote same-day!

Is Breast Truly Best?

This is a summary of an article originally taken from here.

I want to understand how breastfeeding has come to be perceived as the holy grail of health and formula-feeding as the equivalent of giving a baby nicotine. I want to have a better sense of why parents have come to believe that how they feed their baby might be the most important decision they’ll ever make and why our public conversations about baby feeding have become so toxic.

• What I discovered is that our certainty that “breast is best” far exceeds what the evidence tells us.
• This misguided confidence in breastfeeding stems from our poor understanding of science.
• It also comes from the (often unconscious) belief that if mothers try hard enough, they can eliminate risk and produce completely healthy children.
• We’d like to believe:
• Research tells us more than it does
• Mothers have a lot more control — and deserve a lot more blame — than they actually do.
• Our culture pays more attention to some baby health risks than others.
• These tend to be the ones that mothers are expected to alleviate.
• What’s optimal for a baby gets defined in terms of what mothers can do to optimize
  
• Debates about baby feeding are so hostile.
• They are about so much more than what’s best for babies.
• The result of these debates is a culture in which mothers who do not breastfeed are portrayed as harming their children.

What I’m against is using breastfeeding to make mothers feel bad about themselves.

• I don’t claim
• That there are no differences between children who have been breast- or bottle-fed.
• Thousands of studies find that the average breastfed baby is healthier than the average formula-fed baby.
• What they haven’t found:
• Compelling evidence that breastfeeding causes better health.

As the old saying goes,
correlation does not equal causation.
The better health of breastfed babies could well be due, in part or completely, to other things that breastfeeding moms are doing,
not to the breast milk itself.

• For example;
• If you make sure everyone who touches your baby washes their hands first
• If you keep your baby away from the grocery store at 5:00
• If you can afford to have someone care for your baby in your home
• You’re probably doing a lot to reduce your baby’s chances of getting an infection.
  

If you encourage your child to:

• Eat healthy foods and to exercise - you’re contributing to healthy body weight.
• If you read to and have meaningful conversations with your child - you’re stimulating cognitive development.

In fact
If you do the research,
you’ll find that it’s not uncommon for scientists
to stress the benefits of breastfeeding and
at the same time acknowledge that  it’s not clear if babies are better off because they are or were
breast-fed or because they have caretakers
who are willing and able to
promote good health in other ways.

[See, for example, Matthew W. Gilman et. al., “Risk of Overweight among Adolescents Who Were Breastfed,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2001; Erik Lykke Mortensen et. al., “The Association Between Duration of Breastfeeding and Adult Intelligence,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002.]

• Breastfeeding advocates argue:
• Sheer number of studies connecting breastfeeding with healthier babies makes the benefits of breastfeeding irrefutable.
• What they don’t mention:
• Lots of studies, including many published in top research journals, find that breastfeeding has little or no medical benefit.
• [See, among others, Catharine Gale et. al., “Breastfeeding, the Use of Docosahexaenoic Acid-Fortified Formulas in Infancy and Neuropsychological Function in Childhood,” Archives of Disease in Childhood, 2009; and Michael S. Kramer et. al., “Effect of Prolonged and Exclusive Breastfeeding on Risk of Allergy and Asthma: Cluster Randomized Trial,” British Medical Journal, 2007.]
• You can’t fix errors or gaps in the research with quantity;
  • If you have one study that is seriously flawed or that can’t account for an alternative explanation, having 10 or 100 similar studies doesn’t make the problem go away.

 

• There is pretty strong evidence that breastfeeding helps reduce gastrointestinal (GI) infections.
• Even here, we need to be careful not to overstate its benefits.
• One of the most widely respected studies on breastfeeding [Michael Kramer et. al., “Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT): A Randomized Trial in the Republic of Belarus,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 2001] indicated that for every twenty-five breastfed babies there would be one fewer GI infection in the first year.
• That’s a benefit, but it’s fairly minimal, and parents need to decide whether the benefit is worth the cost.

 

• Breastfeeding has real costs.
• The blogosphere is full of testimonials from women who suffered from:
• Horrible emotional distress
• Depression from breastfeeding
• [See, for example, reader responses to the New York Times article, “Breastfeed or Else,” June 20, 2006].

Just because you don’t pay cash for it doesn’t mean breastfeeding is free.

• Another way some advocates push the superiority of breastfeeding:
• Promoting the idea that breastfeeding is “natural”
• Therefore must be superior to “artificial” formula.

Humans do all sorts of things that other mammals don’t. Many of them are “unnatural,” if by that you mean that they manipulate or circumvent nature. Birth control is unnatural, but so is refrigeration, pasteurization, automobiles, and air conditioning. “Unnatural” does not necessarily mean “unhealthy.”

• Most people — mothers included — endorse breastfeeding
  • At least in part because they have a poor understanding and consuming fear of risk.
  • Formula can be contaminated in production, the thinking goes, so why take the risk? Better safe than sorry.
• But, in addition to the short and long-term risks of breastfeeding for mothers.
  • “Natural” breastfeeding poses risks for babies, too.
  • You’d probably be unhappy if you knew exactly what was in your breast milk;
  • In fact, milk is such a good conduit for toxins like lead and DDT that toxicologists often use it to assess environmental contamination.

  
  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t breastfeed;
  what it means is that science simply has been unable to determine if there are long-term effects of these pollutants. Unfortunately, we just don’t know.

Certainly mothers (and fathers) should be expected to make sacrifices for their children. What bothers me is that mothers (and not fathers) are expected to prevent virtually any risk to their babies, regardless of how unlikely or poorly understood that risk is or what it will cost them in the process.

I would argue that how you feed your baby (in a developed country with reliable access to clean water) is largely a lifestyle choice and that in the overwhelming majority of cases, either breastfeeding or formula-feeding is a healthy option. These, today, are fighting words, and they lead almost invariably to a conversation in which, by defending formula, I am cast as being against breastfeeding.

Some women find breastfeeding deeply rewarding, and for them, breastfeeding is the right choice. Others find that formula-feeding works much better, and for them, breastfeeding is the wrong choice. We all know terrific mothers who formula-feed, and plenty of formula-fed babies are as healthy as those who are breastfed. Science has not demonstrated that breastfeeding has serious health advantages, and we need to stop making claims that breastfeeding is the only choice for mothers who care about their children.

Not Everything Is Serious

It's a party. Everyone's Invited.

Give Away!

Dominick's Toybox is giving away a $25.00 Gift Voucher for our shop (located here) through MIB (Moms In Business)'s "AMAZING MIB GIVEAWAY!" along with many other amazing small businesses and companies. 17 give-aways. Go here to check out the contest!

QUICK, EASY Recipes = More Time For You!

We know, dinners, bagged lunches, breakfasts from the place down-under. We understand. This is why we’re bringing you a list of websites that provide simple, quick and most of all, easy recipes for your dinner tonight, your kids lunches tomorrow, whatever you need help with!

x Clover Leaf
x Kraft Canada
x Quick Eats Plus.com
x Easy Kitchen Recipes.com
x Gramma Cookie's Kitchen

Milestones

This morning, I woke up to a low grunting from my son’s crib, which is normally the signal to “I’m awake!”. So I rolled out of bed as I usually do and walked to his crib. To my shock and awe, there’s my seven-month-old, sitting up in his crib, happy as can be, putting his hands out to me to pick him up. This is the first time he’s pulled himself up from a laydown to a sit and maintained it all by himself. At this moment, inside, I’m screaming, “Do you know you’re sitting?! All by yourself?!” but I figured if I had of let that out, I would have scared him and he would have fell over. So, instead I picked him up and praised him, and hugged him firmly. I suppose, that being a Mom is not about how great your baby is, or what they can do better than the other, but rather, a Mom doing what is best for her baby at every possible time. A Mom, is a person who thinks not of her own happiness first, but of both hers and her child’s happiness as an equal. There’s something you can chew on for today.

Our Break-Out To Blogger!

So we'll admit; we're a little new to this. Okay, brand-new. Despite that, we're going to continue to bring you the best possible prices, deals and information as we always have. All moms need and deserve a bit of a hand out there! Both figuratively and literally. We're here to help you! Whether that's bringing you the latest sales and coupons, low-cost baby clothing (both new and used), low cost clothing for you (both new and used), baby accessories or just support, we're here! We know it's difficult, and you're doing a great job! Now, let us help you with the other details. Check back often, because we'll try and update as much as we can. Also, you can check out our facebook page, our facebook profile, and of course our website! Our website is in the works right now, but it should be up and functional in the next few days. Thanks for reading, and we hope you follow us, so we can help you in your journey in Motherhood!