Soldier, Soldier!

~ Posted on Monday, October 15, 2012 at 8:00 AM ~

I think it was last year that hubby bought this set of small green colored plastic soldiers for Benjamin to play with but he's not very into it. Then few months ago, hubby's 1st sister passed on a few bags of toys from her kids and one of the bag contains more soldier toys, with different colors as well! And there's even astronaut set, dinosaur set and a couple of ninjas as well. For sometime Ben was enjoying the ninja pieces all thanks to Lego Ninjago coming out then.

I used to try teaching Ben to sort them by the colors, even arranging them in a line but he's not interested until I saw him doing this last week:

Soldier

I was pleasantly surprised to see him arranging all the astronaut set and then I also noticed him using his right hand to swipe down this set of yellow colored soldiers on his right. If you see the picture below, you will noticed the set of green colored toys which I arranged myself prior to discovering Ben following me later on. There are also some dinosaur toys on the grey colored plastic covers (which I told Ben it is a cage to keep all the dinosaur in)

Soldier

Ben said 'Attack!' and he also said the soldiers all fall down already, need to send to hospital. Oh-kayyyy....

Soldier

And then I noticed something else over the left side of our playroom. A green colored bridge neatly placed in between 2 storage boxes (We had 3 boxes to store different type of toys in the playroom: soldier toys, car toys and wooden blocks) There's a ninja toy stuck hanging in the bridge and when I asked Ben why is the ninja hanging there, he said, need to rescue ninja because he is hanging there.

Oh boy... what an imagination and pretend play! So anyway, I used to be worried that Ben is not learning anything I'm trying to teach him but turns out, things happened on its own time.

We as parents just do our best to teach and when the time is right, you just sit back and see it happens. You see your child showing you what you taught them or even casually mentioning to them somethings long ago and you will be amazed that they are really listening even though they don't seem to be paying attention during then.

Product Review - Zippy Suits

~ Posted on Saturday, October 13, 2012 at 11:47 AM ~

I mentioned before I always have the weirdest and luckiest luck ever! Or  maybe the Twitter fairy is being kind to me again! Anyway, I stumbled upon this tweet message by Zippy Suits looking for bloggers to review their products and when they replied saying they are OK with international bloggers, I immediately got down to choosing the design I wanted for my girl and provided my mailing address details to them. It is a nice coincidence as well that the Zippy Suit arrived a few days before we were due to leave for our short family getaway. So here goes my review!

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Description from the product page:
"Founder of Zippy Suits and mum to two very active children, Nicole Graham got so frustrated trying to match up poppers whilst her daughter wriggled around that in desperation she ended up making a sleepsuit with a zip instead. Research showed many other parents would want to buy such a suit and so Zippy Suits were carefully developed to meet this need and we are proud that Zippy Suits are now helping families worldwide experience less stressful baby changing. As well as making life somewhat easier, Zippy Suits, with their matching dribble bibs, look great on and are super-soft on baby's skin. Click here to see the range."

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To be honest, I realised the size I stated (12-18 months) was a tad too big for my 13 years old girl. I totally did not realised us Asian babies are quite small in size. So anyway, I decided to go ahead to review this and see how it turns out. I chose the Starry
Night design in Hot Pink and I honestly think this design is uber cute and I love the colors! Really eye catching and cute! 

The Zippy Suit looks like any normal rompers (or some call it body suit) except they don't come with poppers at the bottom. Instead you get a zip all the way from one side of the foot all the way to the other foot. Creative! I was also secretly wishing that after washing the Zippy Suit, it might somehow shrink a wee bit (as mentioned in the recommendation on the packaging) but I don't noticed any obvious size change after the washing and drying. Sigh, why did I choose this size!

As mentioned earlier, the Zippy Suit arrived few days before we leave for our short weekend family getaway and I was excited to try it out despite the big sizes for my girl. Pictures taken below show my girl wearing the Zippy Suit. I would have to say she would totally rock this suit if it is smaller in size (Arghhhh! My bad!!!)

The Zippy Suit is OK on her if she is not moving much, like when I was breastfeeding her or while she lies down on the bed. But once she started crawling around on the floor (she's learning to walk by the way but most of the time still crawls around), the Zippy Suit starts to bunch up and she gets slowed down and I had to pull back the feet part and loosen up the suit on her.

In summary, seriously, this is a pretty creative product that a parent with a wriggling tot would totally appreciate during diaper or cloth changing time as you don't have to be stressed out trying to push the popper buttons while trying to hold down your child so that they can remain as still as they possibly can. What you need to do is just zip, zip, zip, all the way!

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You can browse for more designs and sizes at http://www.zippysuit.com/ 

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

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iPad App Review - TTT (Touch The Thing)

~ Posted on Friday, October 12, 2012 at 4:15 PM ~

I decided to review this app as I can foresee my 3.5 years old boy benefiting from using this app. Anyway, my review as below...

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* Title: TTT (Touch The Thing)
* Price: $1.99
* Category: Education
* Released: Jul 29, 2012
* Version: 1.0
* Size: 119 MB
* Language: English
* Seller: Rashin Taheri
* Rated: 4+
* Requirements: Compatible with iPad. Requires iOS 5.1 or later.

Description from the product page:

"TTT turns every object into a fun, interactive artwork. Your children can look at the object, bring the object to life by touching it, learn the name of it, and develop their vocabulary in a creative, fun way never done before. What makes TTT so effective is that it is easy and fun to use, and helps your children quickly learn 180 words with perfect pronunciations by listening to a native speaker pronounce it again and again."

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* 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!

* This is a simple and easy to use app which my 3.5 years old boy has no problem using without my guidance. He just touch and touch whatever objects on the page and learns what is the name of the objects.

* There are some pages which got Ben's attention such as the transportation page and the bathroom page (especially now that he's into playing in his bath tub with all the bubbles!)

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You can purchase the "TTT (Touch The Thing)" 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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