I'm a full-time mummy

I received a pitch from Tidy Tots asking me whether I am interested in reviewing their Potty Chair Liners and as they are happy to ship their products all the way to me in Malaysia, I went ahead with my big 'Yes!' in reviewing their products! So here goes my review for the "Tidy Tots Potty Chair Liners":

Description from the product page:
"From personal experience one of the biggest challenges of potty training a child is cleaning and sanitizing the potty chair bowl each time your child successfully uses it. For many parents, cleaning a potty chair bowl is easier said than done. Tidy Tots™ disposable potty chair liners provide a mess-free solution to potty training. No more pouring or dumping a potty chair bowl in the toilet. No more cleaning poop residue from the potty chair bowl. It's easy as 1-2-3!

1. Cover the removable bowl of your potty chair for toddlers with a Tidy Tots™ liner and smooth it into place;
2. Add a Tidy Tots™ super-absorbent pad;
3. When your child is finished, simply remove the liner from the removable potty chair bowl, pull the drawtape closure and tie it closed and discard the liner as you would dispose of a diaper.

No more yuck!!!"

After reading through the step-by-step instructions on how to use the potty chair liners, I gave it a go, all ready with a newly clean and dry potty. You can see the size of the absorbent pad is quite small, like my palm size. It's a few millimetres thick and does not smell. The potty chair liner is a plastic bag which fits into most potty chairs according to the website.

Firstly, I covered Benjamin's potty chair with a Tidy Tots™ liner, making sure to smooth it into place before adding in the super-absorbent pad by positioning it right in the middle. Then we wait... and wait.

Then Ben decided it's time for him to pee and I happily told him to pee into his potty and I observed how the super absorbent pad works. It soaked up Ben's piss really fast but it soaked through as Ben's piss is really a lot. My 3 years old boy drinks water like there's no tomorrow. I left the potty as it is and waited, hoping he might decide to poop too. And it happened an hour later. Yes!

I was a bit worried Ben might not feel comfortable sitting on his potty now that it is lined with a plastic liner but surprisingly, he sat on it as he poops and did not mentioned about the plastic liner.

This is the part that I love the most! Once he finished pooping, I just remove the liner from the potty, pull the drawtape closure string and tie it closed and discard the liner just like what I normally do for my kids' diapers. No more scrubbing off mess from the potty! Easy peasy!

You can check out Tidy Tots website at http://www.tidytots.com/

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! ONE of you lucky people is going to win this too! Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

(** Article first published as Book Review: Money: How to Be Richer, Now by Super Fast Guides on Blogcritics.)

I received an email pitch asking whether I will be interested in reviewing this book and yes, anything that helps with my knowledge to save more, earn more, waste less, is totally welcome! So here goes my review for the "Money: How to Be Richer, Now" book:

Title: Money: How to Be Richer, Now (Kindle Edition)
Author: Super Fast Guides
Publisher: Super Fast Guides (August 27, 2012)
ASIN: B009385CLW  
Paperback:  49 pages
File Size:  133 KB

Description from the product page:
"Would you like to have a Money Machine that gave you an extra $10, $100, or even $1,000 every month? Do you realize that big businesses are taking away your hard-earned cash every week so that they get richer while you get poorer? Would you like to change this and learn how to get rich like them? Do you know why the rich get richer? Do you want to learn how to make money too?

This guide will answer all of these questions and more. It shows you in easy, simple steps how you can unlock the amazing potential of the Money Machine so that you can learn how to get rich by reducing your expenses and increasing your income so that you have significant amounts of extra cash each and every month. This guide also shows you how you can stop giving away your dollars to big businesses, how to make money and become even richer."

This book comes with advices and tips on how to start making money for yourself by reducing your expenses, increasing your income and how to make your money works more so that you can get the reward by having more money. On each chapter, we understand a little bit more on how to reduce our expenses and increase our income and what are the tips we can apply to do so. 

I particularly like the tips on looking at cost per unit when we shop for things, for example groceries. We have only started applying this tip few years back and realised we do save more and get the better value when we shop for things this way! I also enjoyed the 'Extreme Money Machine Tip' which give additional tips that we can try for more drastic action!

The only thing that I would like to recommend to make this book better is to include some illustrations for better visualization effect. Other than that, this is an easy to read book that offers practical and easy approach to ways you can implement and apply in your life and family for your way to financial freedom.

You can get this book from Amazon .

I am so excited to be able to hold this giveaway for my lucky blog followers and readers! TWO of you lucky people are going to win a softcopy of this awesome book! And by softcopy I mean, e-book in PDF format, OK? Now, let's read below for the giveaway terms and conditions OK?

To enter the giveaway, kindly read and follow the instructions as stated in the Rafflecopter form below.

• You can enter either via login through your Facebook account or just key in your name and your valid email address.
  
• Please also leave your valid email address in the post comment so that I can contact you if you win this giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a PDF copy of the book by the author 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 book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

When I read in the pitch on how I can learn to stop screaming, overreacting and taking my child’s behavior personally, and at the same time remain calm even in the most stressful parenting situations, I told myself I have to review this products! And it is so awesome that the sponsor is willing to send the products to me all the way in Malaysia! Without further delay, here goes my review for the "The Calm Parent AM & PM":

Description from the product page:
"Do you try your best not to scream at your kids, but you boil over with frustration and anger anyway? Does their behavior have you constantly worried and upset? Staying calm with a child who’s disrespectful and who acts out doesn’t come naturally for parents. That’s why so many have sought help over the last 25 years with Debbie Pincus, MS LMHC, a renowned expert in the art and science of parenting calmly, not anxiously. In her new, at–home program, The Calm Parent AM & PM, Debbie shows you how to stop screaming, overreacting and taking your child’s behavior personally, and remain calm even in the most stressful parenting situations."

A little bit more info on the products, if you see the picture above, I received a set of 6 CDs and a book for my review. Product Includes: 3 Calm Parenting lessons on CD, 1 AM audio lesson, 1 PM audio lesson, 1 Bonus audio lesson: The Instant Calm Down & 113–page instruction manual.

It took me about 3 months to get through all the CDs and book before I can come up with the review post that you are reading now! Partly because I was swamped with other product reviews as well as caring our now 3.5 years old boy and also our hyperactive 1 year old girl.

Back to my review, the first thing I did is to take the introductory assessment. Then I put on the CD and read the book as well and find myself nodding a lot of times as I can't help but to agree with how similar the situation I am in as I handle the care of my 2 kids full time.

Yes, I am guilty of the frustrations (towards myself and my kids) and nagging and even yelling at my 3.5 years old boy whenever I caught him doing mischievous things, not listening to my instructions or hitting his baby sister. It really doesn't help when my next door neighbor is having a major house renovation and the constant drilling, hacking and hammering noises that starts from 8.30am on and off until 5-6pm every day, even on Saturdays just add on to the frustration and stress I have!

To summarise my feedback:

CD & Book wise:

* Volume too loud particularly on CD1

* There are few occasions when the speaker sometimes talks too fast making it hard for me to understand what was being said. I had to rewind a couple of times so that I did not miss anything.

* I was hoping that the book could be smaller in size so that it is easy to carry around, or perhaps a small booklet with important points on instant calm-down techniques.

Lessons learned / Points taken:

* We should parent thoughtfully, not reactively.

* The reason why we reacted is because we think we have no choice, and that we are fused to our kids

* Reactivity comes in other forms (not just yelling, screaming) it can also be in the forms of rejection, controlling, distancing, tuning child out, manipulating, threatening, giving in, nagging as well.

* We need to get our focus OFF our child and get it on ourselves! For example: if I want my child to be responsible, then I have to act responsibly with him!

The above are just some of the crucial notes that I wanted to share with you guys based on my review. Do consider getting this if you would like to improve your parenting skills and parent calmly in whatever situations!

You can find out more from http://www.empoweringparents.com/ , Facebook or Twitter.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products 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.