Recent Parenting Articles That Really Struck Me

Why Your Child Should Never Be Forced to Hug a Relative: While the intentions are good, the consequences are pretty bad. As a child, I never felt comfortable being forced to even talk to people and asked to let go of my parents. I can't imagine being forced to kiss or hug somebody when I didn't want to.

8 Things ER Doctors Refuse to Have in Their Homes: Wow, this was pretty eye-opening for me. Things which really surprised me were Ramen Noddle Soups, Old pain pills and High chairs that pull up to the table. I never thought of these are dangerous enough to not keep at home.

How You May Be Ruining Your Child's Love Of Reading: I have been reading to my daughter from the very beginning and she is read to at daycare as well. But recently, as her books have gotten bigger and I'm running low on time, I've been trying to get out of reading after just one book. She wants me to read more and more - I should probably indulge her more and read more books to her.

Free Printable Baby Shower Planning Checklist

This would have been really helpful when I was planning my friend's baby shower and even when I was planning my own baby shower.

Check out this FREE printable Baby Shower planning checklist from Unoriginal Mom

Free Printable Baby Shower Planning Checklist - unOriginal Mom

AGirl's Favorite iOS Apps

AGirl's 3 years old and she loves playing games on the iPad. It really varies by day as to which app she plays with but some of her current favorites are:

Toca Nature :- She loves playing on this app and exploring the environment. This is one of her favorites that she keeps coming back to and playing.

ABC Gurus :- AGirl has never been into the alphabet apps even though I've bought a ton of them for her. This is the only app she has shown interest in and only recently. But for the last month, she has been consistently coming back to the app. You can color each letter and add eyes, mouth and various other features and activate it.

Little Builders :- This is an iOS Editor's choice app and I had just downloaded it because it had become free for the weekend. I had not really expected AGirl to get into this since she's not into trucks or building stuff but she really loved this app and has spent hours on it. At times, she would get frustrated because something she wants to do requires more finger control than she had at that point but the game is really good.

Quick Review: Todoist

Todoist is a great To-Do list manager and it's biggest advantage is that is syncs across all my devices & applications - Chrome, iOS (iPad & iPhone), Linux, Mac. I love the reminders feature and the Karma feature.

I've been using Todoist for about a year and I've been loving it. I'm a premium member but I started off as a basic member and I wanted the premium features - so I decided to get the premium version - it's worth paying for it. I use it to track all my appointments, things I want to follow up on, daily stuff I want to do, articles I want to read in detail later. It can handle a lot.

I especially love the iPhone app - it's so easy for me to tick off tasks I've done and add new tasks on the go. I can also select multiple tasks and move them to another day if I've not been able to complete them.

Try out the basic version and let me know how you like it.

Todoist

To learn more about how to use it, go to A Comprehensive Guide to Todoist

Note: All opinions are my own and I haven't been paid or given anything for free. 

Things to buy and not buy in March

March is just beginning and you can get great deals on certain products like chocolates, frozen foods, cleaning supplies and winter gear on clearance.

To Buy:

• Winter Clearance: It's well known that the best time to buy clothes for a season is a couple of months after the season has started. Right now winter clearance is on everywhere and you can get great deals for next year or even for rest of this winter depending on where you live. 

• Chocolate: Now's a great time to buy all the Valentine's day clearance chocolate and you can use it for baking or just enjoy the chocolate :)

• Cleaning Products: There are lots of coupons out for cleaning supplies and combined with sales on the brand name cleaning supplies, now's a great time to stock up on them. 

• Frozen Food: March is Frozen Food month and you can find good sales on frozen food and stock up. 

• Luggage: Winter travel is over and summer travel is yet to start. You may find some good deals on luggage. 

Don't buy:

• Spring Clothes: They will go on sale soon once spring starts. 

• New Smartphones: Don't buy new smartphones which are still at full price. If you want to buy, go for older models which will be on sale. 

• Patio furniture: The best patio furniture deals start over Memorial Day or Independence Day holidays

February Goals Update

February was a busy month - my health is not doing so great and had some challenges with that. I didn't make too much progress on my goals but I didn't expect to anyway with everything that's going on.

Goals for 2016:

• Blogging:
• One post a week: I did 8 posts in January. 

• Family:
• Get my daughter potty-trained: Still working on this. Making some progress. The sticker chart didn't work but she is doing better with peeing in the potty if I take her. She still doesn't tell me when she needs to go. She still wants to poop only in her diaper - improvement is that she asks me to put a diaper on her when she wants to poop.
• Get her ready for Kindergarten: Have been spending more time reading to her and asking her to identify letters and doing puzzles with her. Also have been listening to stories that she comes up with - she is so imaginative. 

• Professional:
• Learn one new technology over the course of the year: No progress on this

• Home-making:
• Organize the entire house top-to-bottom and room-by-room: Spent time organizing one of the guest bedrooms and some more organizing of the master bedroom. Spent some time decluttering some parts of the study. 

• Financial:
• Create a budget every month and stick to it: Did a good job sticking to February's budget. Didn't save any money due to some unexpected expenses.

• Personal Goals:
• Read 12 books this year: I read some fan fiction and also read the Getting It Together ebook. I will do a separate post on that. 
• Do some craft projects: I did my second adult coloring page :)