Breast Cancer Awareness Month

~ Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 1:48 PM ~

Came across this awesome article highlighting breast cancer awareness in October.

For every 12 months of breastfeeding, a woman can lower her breast cancer risk by 4.3%. Wow! I am still breastfeeding my 3.5 years old boy now on top of tandeming with my 1 year old girl. So that would be over 12%!

And since I'm breastfeeding Alyson, I'm helping to reduce her risk by 26-31%!

Nice!

iPad App Review - A Smile for Elliot

~ Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 7:36 AM ~

My 3 years old boy is quite a cool kid in the sense that he doesn't smile unless he's doing something mischievous or unless you asked him to, or unless he's super happy with something. I guess he's pretty much like me, reserved and cool initially. So I know I just had to review this app when I saw the review pitch of this app as I wanted to know how I can make him smile next time! Anyway, my review as below...

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* Title: A Smile for Elliot
* Price: $3.99
* Category: Books
* Released: Sept 14, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 157 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Touchoo Ltd.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.2 or later

Description from the product page:

"This is a story of a little boy who tries to help his special friend find his smile again. Together they travel through colorful and fascinating experiences that can only be created in a child's imagination."

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What's good?

* It is engaging and interactive and I love that some of the objects we touch on the pages animates pretty funny too! The illustrations are simple and yet captivating.

* I also appreciate the progress bar at the bottom which indicates how far along are we into the story.

* I like that the app featured a boy as one of the main character (other than Elliot the koala bear) as I feel my 3 years old boy can relate himself better with the storyline.

* I also find this app timely as my boy is in the pretend play stage currently and his imagination at the moment is just so astounding... so when I saw the pages with the characters imagining that they shrunk to the size of a mouse and eating the yummylicious cupcakes, I can't help but smile as my boy sometimes pretends he shrinks and enlarges (after watching the "Honey I shrunk the kids" movie)

* There are some pages which I also used the opportunity to teach my boy about seasons, fall, winter, spring and summer. It is cute and fun to see the environment and the characters changing as we pressed the 4 seasons icon at the bottom right on the screen.

* I have to admit I went 'Awwwwwww...' at the last page in this app. Just too cute to see the koala bear finally smiling with the little boy!

Room for Improvement?

* Nothing much I can think of other than I think the price of the app at $3.99 is a bit too pricey.

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You can purchase the "A Smile for Elliot " app from the iTunes App Store.

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I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code to redeem the application for free from iTunes Store in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous iPad Apps reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My iPad App Reviews"

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