I'm a full-time mummy

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys.

Personally, I don't really feel comfortable with our kiddos using the ring float and either hubby or myself will always be around to hold onto our younger kiddos when we're in the pool. The older ones who can float by themselves (wearing arm floats and they have been taught to hold their breath in the water and keep themselves afloat) will be under our watchful eyes as well.

As for outdoor activities (as per this article), I think there should be more staff or resources to monitor and watch out the children. If you observe in the video, the teacher was preoccupied with another child as the boy drowns. This could've been easily avoided if there are more eyes to watch after the children.

You can watch the video here or by clicking on the image below which will lead you to the source article.

 For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

A three-year-old child in north-west China nearly drowned after he flipped over his rubber ring and was left struggling underwater for at least two minutes. Neither of the two instructors at the children's pool noticed the boy immersed in the water upside down despite standing right next to him. The child was finally removed from the pool after one of the teachers noticed his motionless body. He remains under intensive care in hospital.

The boy was taking part in a swimming lesson at a kindergarten in Zhangjiakou city, Hebei province when the accident happened. Surveillance footage of the horrifying incident shows the boy wearing an inflatable ring playing in the pool among nine other classmates. He then accidentally flips backwards, plunging his head underwater. The boy was seen desperately to stay afloat, wriggling his legs in the air and trying to flip his ring back.

His teacher, who was also in the pool, was seen attending to another student and did not notice the drowning child. It did not occur to the other children who were beside him that something was wrong with their friend. After struggling in vain for about 40 seconds, the child eventually ran out of breath and passed out. He was seen floating motionless at one end of the pool.

Nearly half a minute had passed before the boy was finally discovered by his shocked teachers. When he was lifted out of the water, the little boy was not breathing and his faced had turned purple, according to Hebei Youth Daily. He was immediately taken to hospital where doctors fortunately saved him.

The incident sparked outrage among net users - many of whom are parents themselves. 'The kindergarten should be held responsible for this incident. The child could have died,' one user commented. 'The accident could have caused permanent brain damage to the boy! The teachers' actions are just unacceptable,' another said.

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During our recent family holiday in May 2018, I have decided to ditch the lollipops and iPad which we usually brought along to pacify our kiddos during our 1-2 hours airplane ride. This time, I took the risk of introducing a new activity for our children which is - coloring!

Few days before our trip, I Googled around for free coloring pages worksheets for our children (robot and soldier related for our 9-year-old boy and princess related for our 6.5 and 4.5-years-old girls). I packed 2 cases of color pencils.

Picture below taken as the plane starts taking off and they were so engrossed with their coloring pages. None of the usual fuss of ear blocked, ear pressures etcetc. Win-win!

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

As a busy mum with 4 kiddos between 1.5year-old to 9-years old, I have started cutting down on doing product reviews to focus on our childcare and family life, home cooking, education, helping with hubby's administration site of the business and sharing informational articles on my FB fan page so I am only accepting and prioritizing products that can fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or educational stuff, family products, something along those genre)! Today's post is my review on Gaston Luga, a Scandinavian minimalistic chic backpack.

About the company/products:

"The story of Gaston Luga and the minimalistic backpacks took its start during a trip to a new continent, where our founder Carl Sundqvist met an interesting Frenchman with an elegant and casual style. Gaston told Carl he believed a backpack is the optimal companion when discovering the world. Since he was a person keen of his style, he had put time and effort into finding something different from the regular school style. Finally he found himself an elegant Louis Vuitton, to which he had several modifications made. Making it more personal, functional and unique. Inspired after the meeting, Carl decided a few months later to create his own backpack brand with classic elegant style and practical details. Hopefully these would get to travel the world, just like Gaston.

Gaston Luga loved his elegantly custom-made piece. We understood the industry was lagging when it comes to what customers today want. Most products are designed with big fluffy shoulder pads, plastic materials and thin fabric, which brings thoughts back to the first day of school. It was important for Carl to create something he would wear himself and be proud of. The vision was to make a line with Scandinavian minimalism and elegance to suit all different occasions. As time went on, leather parts, thick quality cotton, metal details and a mix of carefully selected colors were put together and became the foundation of the new brand named after its predecessor, Gaston Luga."

I decided to go for Pråper - Navy & Brown for my review. Look at the picture from the website, how beautiful it is! What attracted me to this particular design is not just the unique color combination (not too masculine nor too feminine) it is the simplicity of its overall look.

I have mentioned earlier that as a busy mum with 4 kiddos, I really prefer using items that can pack as much items as possible as I'm often on the move with 4 kiddos. Now let's move on to the close-up pictures of the features on the backpack...

I had initially worried about the metal hooks as a mean to secure the backpack as I thought how can such a simple hook be able to keep the backpack flap secured and closed?! But boy oh boy, this backpack proves me wrong! I absolutely adored the strong metal hooks which is adjustable with 4 levels to suit my current packing need, even with a lot of stuff packed into the backpack I normally use the top 2 levels for the metal hook. It is so easy to hook and unhook, even with a single hand (believe me, with 4 kiddos around, I always have to carry one of younger kiddos so to be able to access the backpack with 1 hand is awesome news for me!)

The shoulder straps are expandable though I adjusted mine to the shortest (due to my 5' 3" height, I prefer my backpack snug to my body size). The dimensions of the backpack in cm is 30 x 42 x 15, I personally feel the size is just right for me. There is a passport pocket at the back of the backpack but because I am travelling with my family when I use the backpack, there's a total of 6 passports for us, so I can't use this pocket to store our bulky passports. I did keep some small plastic bags in this pocket.

There is an inner 13-15" laptop compartment as well as 2 smaller inner pockets inside the backpack which I used to store some disposable diapers, snacks and medicines for our kiddos. I also packed in some change of clothings as well as 2 water tumblers (around 1l and 1.5l in sizes). There is also portable fan as well as nursing covers for my toddler. Picture below shows how the backpack looks like, all stuffed for our family trip to Bangkok in late April 2018.

Yet, with so many things inside, I can still stuff in more things. Sometimes I wonder whether the backpack is some sort of black hole or something! Below are some rare pictures of yours truly using the backpack during our Bangkok travel. Right side picture is taken when we took the river boat to Koh Kret, a small man-made island in the Chao Phraya River, just north of Bangkok. Check out the water splashed on the backpack, no problem at all as it dries up real fast and doesn't affect the contents of my backpack.

To sum up my review, I absolutely enjoyed using this backpack!

Thank you Gaston Luga for the opportunity given to try out your awesome backpack!

Do check out the variety choices and designs at https://gastonluga.com/my/

As stated in the title, there is an additional 15% discount especially for my fans.

Just put in the code fulltimemummy when you purchase your backpack!

Do note that 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.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.