Baby Basics: Babies Beating The Drum!

This past week at our momstown Baby Basics the babies got their groove on. Michelle from Prelude Music came by to talk about the benefits of introducing music at a young age and our babies got to play with instruments and we sang songs.

First off, Michelle has a voice! Oh my, what a voice. And what I really liked was that she sang different songs, not the typical nursery rhymes that we all know and love but if you hear The Wheels on The Bus one more time you will throw the CD out the window. You know!!

She also incorporated their names into the music and really paid one on one attention to each child. It intrigued them all and they were very focused on the session.

They even played with the guitar!!

We had a wonderful time. Michelle is not only fabulous with kids but so knowledgable about music. Michelle is both a Canadian accredited (MTA) and an American certified (MT-BC) music therapist. She has specialized training in Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT), which can assist those individuals who have rehabilitation and/or neurological needs as well as Neonatal Intensive Care Music Therapy (NICU), assisting premature infants and their families.

You can check out Prelude Music's summer schedule on their website at http://www.preludemusic.ca/ or you can visit them at 1700 Corydon Ave. Summer session starts soon, so hurry. They offer programs for children of all ages. The perfect way to keep your little ones busy this summer.

Come help us celebrate momstown's 5th Birthday!

WE ARE HAVING A PARTY AND EVERYONE IS INVITED!

If you thought last years birthday celebration was a Blast......

you're going to be BLOWN AWAY by the party we've got planned for our 5th year celebration!

When: August 19, 2012

Where: Earl Grey Community Centre

Address: 360 Cockburn Street North

Winnipeg, MB  

Time: 10:00am - 1:00pm 

National sponsors such as Today's Parent, Kids CBC, Scholastics, Fisher-Price, Britax, Melitta, ConAgra will all be there to help make this our BIGGEST BASH yet!

That's just the start! We have tons of local businesses sponsoring the event such as Nest Family Centre, Two Rivers Chiropractic Centre, Prelude Music, Consumer Care Maid Services, Baby Butz Cream, Hair Do Zoo, Cake-ology Gabrielle Touchette Photography, Eye Impact Face Painting, Par-T-Perfect, Exhale Dance Studio, Booster Juice, Tim Hortons Community Cruiser and more!! 

There are more in the works too. Follow us on Facebook for updates on our sponsors, including awesome prizes and activities!

There will be lots for everyone to do. Demos (like music, baby massage, kids dancing, nutrition), circle time including songs, parachute play, crafts, a play zone, science & discovery zone, loot bags (to the first 100 guests) , door prizes and a cake cutting ceremony (courtesy of Cake-ology). We will also have a Nursing Station (courtesy of Nest Family Centre) for our moms and a Baby Changing Station (courtesy of Baby Butz Cream) for the wee little ones.

Let us know you're coming by signing up today on our momstown Winnipeg Facebook Fan Page - A great way to keep up with all of the latest and greatest announcements leading up to the main event! 

Visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/momstownWinnipeg

It's a month long celebration across Canada with parties taking place in:

If you're a business and would like to help us celebrate please contact us at advertising.winnipeg@momstown.ca for details of our sponsorship packages. Spaces are limited!

Hope to see you there!

Old MacDonald Had a Farm....

This month's theme was loads of fun! On the farm couldn't have come at a better time. My son is just learning to talk and learn about animals and the sounds they make.

This month at our Tales for Tots we read this adorable finger puppet book. You may of heard of it before? Old MacDonald Had a Farm is a fun, interactive finger puppet book that got all the kids oinking, mooing and giggling.

Scholastics sent us a copy of this book to give away and one lucky tot got to take it home!

We of course sang the classic song, Old MacDonald Had a Farm and we talked about all the things you can find on a farm, like trackers, barns, cows, pigs, cats and more!

After the toddlers got to do a fun craft using their foot for the base of the tractor. It was little messy but fun! It's a great craft for kids to practise cutting and pasting.

Check out how to make this craft here.

Our infants sat around while the big kids got their craft on!

Thanks to Scholastics for sending us this adorable book and for Chapters Polo for having us again!

On The Farm Birthday Party

We celebrated Calista’s second birthday today! I love party planning and I’ll be honest, I’ve been brainstorming party ideas since well before her first birthday.  My husband said that I’m not allowed to start planning her third birthday until two months before. Little does he know the power of ideas that flow from Pinterest!

I chose to put together an On the Farm/Barnyard themed party. Calista enjoys making various animal noises and pointing out different animals. During a bike ride through Birds Hill Park, she was in awe when she saw horses up close. My childhood summers were also spent on my grandparents’ farm in Saskatchewan and I have very fond memories of being on a farm. All in all, it was the great theme to choose!

The food table:

• Napkins and cutlery were wrapped to look like carrots. I wrapped orange napkins around green cutlery and secured it with green ribbon. 

• I found the pony cake on the Betty Crocker website and printed off the template to cut out the shapes.  After the cake was baked and cooled, my husband helped me assemble and my mom and I decorated the cake.  It was a bit of a rushed job since the assembly and decoration started about 40 minutes before people arrived (note to self for next year: allocate more time for cake decorating).  

• For beverages, I served Moo Juice (chocolate milk) and well water (not really well water). 

• I made cute little signs with cardstock, markers and popsicle sticks describing things that are found on a farm.  There was a vegetable patch, a fruit orchard, hay, and tractor wheels.  Pretzels were used for the “hay” and wraps (because they are round) were the “tractor wheels”. 

• Baskets are found all over farms so it was fitting to carve one out of a watermelon and put the birthday girl’s initials on it. 

For decorations and invitations, we kept things very simple.  I purchased barnyard themed invitations along with the matching decorations from the store, Party Stuff.  The decorations contained 5 different cardboard cut-outs of various farm animals that I placed around the room in addition to the one balloon that came with the set.  Easy peesy!  As a thank you for coming to Calista’s party, I gave her little friends a book and stickers to do with “farms” that I purchased at Dollarama.

The activities that I planned were very age appropriate for Calista and her buddies.  We blew bubbles, sang Old McDonald Had a Farm and I read the story Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton.  A fellow momstown momma gave me some cardboard cut-outs of barnyard animals that she used for one of her child’s birthdays.  I glued popsicle sticks on to them and created props to go along with Old McDonald.  I loved watching my husband use the props (his inner child has really come alive a lot more in the past two years!).  

The party was two hours long starting at 11am which was a perfect time to do everything that I had envisioned and the kiddos were more than ready for nap time (mom and dad too!).  The barnyard theme gave me a chance to be creative and to create some wonderful memories and pictures that I can look back on in the years to come.  It was a wonderful party spent with loved ones!

This article was written by our guest blogger Christina, who sure knows how to throw a party! 

List of Toxic Chemicals in Your Home!

The Problem - Dozens of Toxic Chemical in Our Bodies

The #2 cause of death for 5 - 9 year old children, in Canada and the USA, is CANCER and it is not because they smoke cigarettes! This seems odd until you realize that the concentration of toxic chemicals is very high in children.

The Centre for Disease Control says most children and adults carry dozens of pesticides and toxic compounds in their bodies that are found in consumer products. Many are potential health threats.

Over 80,000 chemical compounds are commonly used in the products we buy! Many of these chemicals are responsible for causing health problems in children and adults such as;

• Cancer

• Asthma

• Bronchitis

• Emphysema

• Allergies

• Sterility

• Birth Defects

• Brain Damage

• Eczema

• ADD

This is just a partial list of possible health problems caused by things we are commonly using in our homes!

Fifteen Hazardous Household Chemicals

1. Air Fresheners

• Formaldehyde: Highly toxic, known carcinogen.

• Phenol: Skin swelling, burning, peeling, and hives. Causes cold sweats, convulsions, circulatory collapse, coma or death.

2. Bleach

• Strong corrosive. Can irritate or burn skin, eyes and lungs. Can cause pulmonary edema, vomiting and coma if ingested. Don't mix bleach with ammonia, the fumes can KILL you.. 

3. Ammonia

• A volatile chemical that can damage your eyes, lungs and skin.

4. Carpet Shampoo

• Perchlorethylene: Carcinogen which damages the liver, kidney or nervous system.

• Ammonium Hydroxide: Corrosive. Irritates eyes, skin and lungs.

5. Dishwasher Detergents

• With concentrated dry chlorine is reported to be the biggest cause of child poisonings..

6. Drain Cleaner

• Lye: Caustic. Burns the skin, eyes. Internally it will damage the esophagus and stomach. 

• Hydrochloric Acid: Corrosive. Damages eyes and skin. Will damage the kidneys, liver and digestive tract. 

• Trichloroethane: Eye and skin irritant, nervous system depressant. It can also damage liver and kidneys.

7. Furniture Polish

• Petroleum Distillates: Highly flammable. Can cause skin and lung cancer. 

• Phenol: Skin swelling, burning, peeling, and hives. Causes cold sweats, convulsions, circulatory collapse, coma or death.

• Nitrobenzene: Easily absorbed through the skin, extremely toxic

 8. Mold and Mildew Cleaners 

• Sodium hypochlorite: Corrosive. Irritates or burns skin and eyes and causes fluid in the lungs and can cause a coma or death. 

• Formaldehyde: Causes cancer. Irritantes eyes, nose, throat, and skin. Can cause nausea, headaches, nosebleeds, dizziness, memory loss and loss of breath.

9. Oven Cleaners

• Sodium Hydroxide (Lye): Caustic. Causes burns to both skin and eyes. Inhibits reflexes. Causes severe tissue damage if swallowed.

10. Antibacterial Cleaners

• Triclosan: Skin absorption can cause liver damage.

11. Laundry Room Products 

• Sodium or Calcium Hypocrite: Corrosive. Irritates or burns skin, eyes and lungs. 

• Linear Alkylate Sulfonate: Skin absorption can cause liver damage.  

• Sodium Tripolyphosphate: Irritates skin and mucous membranes. Causes vomiting.

12. Toilet Bowl Cleaners 

• Hydrochloric Acid: Highly corrosive., irritant to both skin and eyes. Damages kidneys and liver. 

• Hydrochloric Acid: Corrosive. Damages eyes and skin. Will damage the kidneys, liver and digestive tract. 

13. Pesticides 

• Dimpylate: (Diazinon), Extremely toxic. Impairs the central nervous system. 

• Chlorinate Hydrocarbons: Suspected carcinogen and mutantagen. Accumulates in food and in fatty tissue. Will attack the nervous system. 

• Organophosphates: Toxic and poisonous. If you can smell it, your lungs are absorbing it.

14. Flea Powders

• Carbaryl: Very toxic, causes skin, respiratory and cardiovascular system damage. 

• Chlordane: Accumulates in the food chain, may damage eyes, lungs, liver, kidney and skin. 

• Dichlorophene: Skin irritation: May damage liver, kidney, spleen and central nervous system.

15. Lice Shampoo 

• Lindane: Inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin causes vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions and circulatory collapse. May cause liver damage, stillbirths, birth defects and cancer.

The Solution

Naturally Based Products

Replace the products with toxic chemicals with natural alternative products such as Melaleuca products. This is easier and less expensive than most people think.

For more information, contact me:

Dianne Gray-Wysocki
204-257-6140
wysocki@mts.net

Educating Consumers to Make Wiser Choices
http://saferforyourhome.com/

This article was written by Dianne Gray-Wysocki of safeforyourhome.com