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Giveaway! Blue Manatee Books Unplugged Box

If you’re a regular reader here, you know that Emily and I both loooove to read.  And of course, we love to read to our kids.  It has been a great joy watching my kids learn to read and learn to love books.  Jonah, like his siblings before him, also loooves books. He loves to be read to and to sit and turn the pages on his own. He also loves to make a big mess of his books in the living room every day. Books are so multi-purpose!

When Blue Manatee Books, a super cool kids’ bookstore and de-cafe asked me if I’d like to review one of their special boxes of books, it was a total no-brainer!  I got to pick out a 3-book Baby Unplugged box of books. It was so fun selecting books for Jonah. There were really just TOO many good choices. In the end I went with these three: Baby Unplugged: Ball, Baby Bear, Baby Bear What do You See? by Eric Carle, and Bugs which is a fabulous touchy-feely book.

Here’s Jonah enjoying Baby Unplugged: Ball. It’s such a cute book and is great for vocabulary building! There is a whole Baby Unplugged series and I definitely want to get more of them!

Blue Manatee boxes make great gifts because you can customize the box with any books you want to! It comes it awesome, re-usable eco-friendly packaging (complete with play ideas for the box!) and a custom gift message.

I love getting and giving books at the holidays! And I love when my kids get them too.

Wanna try a blue manatee box for yourself? You can win one 3-book Baby Unplugged box! Here’s how to enter!

1) Leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite children’s book

2) Like Blue Manatee Boxes on Facebook and then come back here and leave a comment letting me know you did

3) Like Mommin’ It Up on Facebook and then come back here and leave me a comment letting me know you did

The winner will be chosen at random on Thursday October 18th at 6 pm. GOOD LUCK! May the best book-lover win!

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Blue Manatee provided me with a 3-book box to facilitate my review. All opinions are my own.

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PinFTW: Easy Toddler Activities!

Well hello there Wednesday friends! I’ve decided to link up to Pin for the Wednesdays at its new home, Daily Ups and Pounds AGAIN today. Mostly because I’m soooo pleased with myself and my pinteresty-ness this week.

Over the weekend I started looking in earnest for activities to do with Jonah. Preferably those that don’t involve TV or a screen of any kind, and can be done with things I already have laying around the house. Fortunately, Pinterest did not let me down! I didn’t replicate any idea exactly, but I got most of my pinspiration from these two pins here and here.

Here’s what Jonah and I have been up to this week! Making messes and having FUN! And hopefully learning something. 🙂

This one’s kind of hard to see in the picture, but what I did here was just give him a bunch of small colored pom poms and have him put them in an empty spice jar. He loved it and it kept him busy for  over 30 minutes! We talked about the colors of the pom poms, too. He can say blue, green, red, and orange. This activity is also good for fine motor skills.

Next, we got out something most everyone has laying around, a kitchen colander. First, I had him poke pipe cleaners through the slats in it, but he didn’t like that. Then I got the bright idea of using popsicle sticks, and he loooooved this one. I strapped him into the booster seat for this activity and he did it for-EV-er. Over an hour! He was excited to try it the next day, too.

Finally, we made a big fun mess with a sensory bin. For this activity I just took a 9 x 13 pan and filled it with rice, rotini, spaghetti, feathers, and pom poms. He had fun messing around with all the things in the bin and eventually started taking stuff out of it, so I got him another dish and he started putting stuff into that dish. He went back and forth like that for awhile and made a big mess! It was fun and easy to clean up with the hose on our vacuum.

Well, those are my winning pins for today! Please leave me a comment telling me what a fabulous mother I am. Oh, and don’t forget to check out all the winning pins and link up over at Daily Ups and Pounds!

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Jonah’s First Pro Photos. (Yes, I’m a SLACKER.)

My darling Jonah boy is now almost 22 months old and…I finally just got the kid’s photos done professionally! Oh my poor, neglected third child! Of course I had to throw my big kids in for a session, too! They hadn’t had theirs done in over two years.  Ooops.

So, anyway! The cure for my photographic slackerdom was my friend Cyrissa of Immerse Photography. Last weekend we headed over to a beautiful arboretum in our area for an outdoor photo session. Jonah was ready to RUN in all that beautiful wide-open space, so I was worried Cyrissa wouldn’t be able to get any good shots. He was being a total booger and just wanted to be on the move.  But, as you can see, she worked her magic well. Look at my baby!

And my big boy:

And my pretty girl:

I cannot tell you how much I ADORE all these photos! What’s not to love?

If you are in the Dayton area, I really recommend you contact Immerse for your family portraits. Cyrissa is professional, fun, and as you can see, extremely talented, You can see the flyer below for her contact info – tell her I sent you and you’ll get 10% off your print orders.  Wheee! You know I loves me a coupon!

To see more of Immerse Photography’s great work, check out their Facebook page.

Thanks Cyrissa, for these beautiful portraits!

{Please insert comments below about how beautiful my children are!}

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Immerse Photography provided me with a portrait session free of charge to facilitate this review.

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