I'm a full-time mummy

Towards the end of May this year, I blogged about our upcoming product reviews for Skechers again and yes, it has been such an awesome opportunity to be able to work with Skechers again! I have previously shared our review on Ben's awesome kid's shoes, the "Skechers Boys' Hot Lights: Damager - Police II Shoes" so this round will be on Alyson's "Skechers Girls' Lite Dreamz - Dreamweaver Shoes":

Description from the product page:
"She'll be running on clouds wearing the SKECHERS Lite Dreamz - Dreamweaver shoe. Smooth matte or metallic leather, synthetic and mesh fabric upper in a bungee laced slip on sporty athletic training sneaker with stitching and overlay accents."

We have quite a tough time trying to get our 1.5 years old girl to try out her shoes. She has long outgrown her Skechers Twinkle Toes: Shuffles - Cammie Cow Shoes and is currently wearing a pair of Ladybug design shoes I got her from Tesco. She tried 4 pairs of shoes, different designs and colors and she started getting restless and cranky having to change so many shoes... and we decided shoe #2 looks the best on her.

So let's see how this awesome shoes look like. We settled on this pair as it is not too overly pink and we thought blue and pink is a nice color combo on our girl. Plus I like that the shoes do not have too much blings on it hahahaha... Another important criteria that made me choose this design is the comfy padding around the ankle area. The shoe base is tough and thick, solid to the touch and I feel that it is a good support for our girl.

As with her previous shoes, Alyson of course still can't tie her shoes yet so I love that this shoes came with a Velcro strap which can be easily taken off and stick back, easy for us to handle the shoes. I also like this shoes design as it sort of matches mine hahaahah..  mother-daughter pairing hehehe...

Pictures below were taken during our family outings:

Based on our previous experience with Skechers shoes, we are of course happy our girl is wearing Skechers shoes again as we feel she is safe in it and can protect her (especially at this very hyperactive toddler stage!) and yet it makes her look cute and cool at the same time! 

Our vedict? An awesome shoes yet it looks stylish and edgy for a kid! Skechers never disappoint us at all and will continue to have our support and praises!

You can check out the designs at http://skechers.com.my/index.php

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the product by Skechers 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.

We had just recently reviewed "Just Helping My Dad" and now, we have the privilege to add this story app to our collection!

* Title: Just Me and My Cousin
* Price: $0.99
* Category: Books
* Released: May 23, 2013
* Current Version: 2.3
* Size: 37.4 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Oceanhouse Media, Inc.
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

Description from the product page:

"Little Critter visits his aunt, uncle and cousin in this charming story. The day starts off well but Little Critter quickly learns that it's not always easy (or fun!) playing with his cousin. After pillow fights, tattletailing and checkerboards overturned, Little Critter is ready to go home. What will his cousin do to save the day?"

One of the reasons why I wanted to add this story app into our collections is because our boy is regularly in touch with his cousins so I think he can totally relate himself with Little Critter and I was wondering what we can learn from this story app as well.

What's good?

* It is engaging and interactive and I love that we can also touch the objects in each page on the screen and the words pop out to tell you what it is!

* I took this opportunity in this story app to teach my boy that although Little Critter's cousin is very mischievious, he should not follow his footsteps and must play nicely and fair and not engage in rough play as shown by Little Critter's cousin.

* I took the opportunity in the page above to show my boy that we have to say sorry and admit our mistakes when we do wrong and we should be remorseful and try to patch up any mistakes so that we can preserve good relationships with others.

You can purchase the "Just Me and My Cousin" app from the iTunes App Store.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the promo code by the sponsor 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"

I mentioned in my previous post on my third pregnancy at month 6 post that I had a bit high glucose reading (8.5mol when normal range should be 6-7mol) and after texting my gynae, he adviced me to do a self-blood sugar test and to report back the results to him before he determines the next step of actions for me. Hence, this post is to share with you how to do self-monitoring of blood glucose.

Firstly, you will need to get the following items from your local pharmacy:

- Sterile lancets (needle to prick your finger to extract small amount of blood for the testing)

- Alcohol swabs

- Glucometer

- Test strips (where you drip your blood onto the strip to get reading from the glucometer)

Picture below showing you all the items required to perform your self-monitoring of blood glucose:

Now here's the steps to perform your self-monitoring of blood glucose:

Step 1: Get ready to insert the test strip into the glucometer. Glucometer will automatically turned on when test strip inserted completely. At this moment, I did not slide in the test strip completely as I take some time to gather courage to prick my finger do the blood test.

Step 2: Ensure test strip is adjusted into the glucometer properly so that you can straight away push it in when you are ready to smear your blood onto the test strip.

Step 3: Open up the cover of the lancing device. Insert a sterile lancet into the lancing device. Just twist clockwise/anticlockwise to separate out the needle from the protective head of the lancet.

Step 4: You can adjust your level of how deep you want your finger to be prick. Mine is 6 as anything below doesn't even poke through my skin. Do note that the higher the number, the deeper the needle will poke into your skin. Close back the cover of the lancing device.

Step 5: Get ready an alcohol swab and rub the finger you want to prick. Let the alcohol on your finger dry first as it may affect the glucose values shown by the meter. Adjust the lancing device on top of the finger to prick and press the trigger for the needle to prick your finger.

Step 6: Push in the test strip, wait for the sign on the glucometer to indicate it is ready to read your blood test. Draw enough blood so that you can smear some onto the test strip. Wait for 5 seconds for your results to be shown on the glucometer screen. Do remember to use back the alcohol swab to stop the bleeding. You're done!

Some tips I got from the Internet:

- Don’t prick the same finger in the same area- keep on changing the places for pricks- this prevents the pain or infection which may happen if the same finger is needled all the time.

- If you use alcohol swabs to wipe the skin before pricks let it dry completely as alcohol itself is a reducing agent and may affect the values shown by the strip.

- When the oozing droplet is not sufficient increase the number on the dial of the lancing pen – or if you are pricking the finger manually, prick deeper - alternately change the place of pricks.

- Do not recycle the lancets, alcohol swabs or test strip. Use once and discard after use!

So there you go, hope I didn't miss out any information and thank you for reading!