CARSEATS EXPIRE PEOPLE

With my shopping for baby started (okay in full bloom) I've been surfing around the various classified sites and places listing used goods and I've seen an abundance of older carseats and carriers for sale. I know these sites are buyer beware type thing, so providing all the info on the product is not the onus of the site/ group. So I wanted to put a reminder out there. Please remember that carseats and carriers EXPIRE. The average lifespan is about 5 years. Some people are listing height / weight restrictions but no one is listing the expiry dates. Many people don't realise seats expire... for obvious reasons they don't look at a piece of equipment like they do a carton of milk.

I think what scared me most was that people were eating up the older seats that were selling for next to nothing, but ignoring the gently used much young snugride (or other known brand) that was selling for like $40 (still a good price).

I realised our own home on the web http://www.nlmoms.com had no stance on this either... so I fixed that by adding an advisory to our marketplace rules too!


If you are buying a carseat or carrier used here are some tips:

1. You want to know the history of the seat (has it been in any accidents)

2. You will want to know the height and weight restrictions; to make sure it suitable for your child.

3. You need to ask the EXPIRY DATE (which should be on a sticker on most carseat/ carriers). Otherwise ask for the manufactured date. Most seats (with the exception of some new ones) have a lifespan of 5 years.

4. Ask for the brand, make and model # so you can look up further information about the seat for yourself. Most manufacturers have the product specifics and mannuals on line.

Summer baby

I went to walmart and they had some summer stuff on discount. Got baby Niko 4 pairs of shorts all size 3 months ranging in cost from $1 - $3. Can't go wrong with that lol I'm a little weary over the whole summer baby thing.. hopefully it won't be a real hot one!

Niko's Bedding

We won the auction for this adorable bedding on ebay today... I'm in love with it and it was such a great deal! Here are a couple pics:





The bedskirt cause it's really cute and you can't really see it in the other picture lol





13 pieces for about $120cdn It includes everything in the picture; minus the lamp and mobile (had the option to buy those but didn't want them). I hope it is as nice in person as it appears in the pictures!

Let the shopping begin...

I kept a lot of stuff from ds#1 so I won't need to buy too much! After the ultrasound we went to a playdate and then because we were in the east stopped into old navy and winners. I got a pair of shorts, a hat and mitt set, 2 Xmas and one Halloween shirt with legs (no idea what these are really called) for the baby and a toy owl d picked out. All for like $10. Then we went to winners and they made an announcement that customers currently shopping in the store would get 15% off. I got some socks and onesies and a train for dylan... we didnt see much there. But it was fun to do the first bit of shopping :)

It's a boy!!!

Well we had our ultrasound and ....




Say hello to Niko Sebastian We will call him Nick for short. He was only measuring 4 days ahead... so hopefully that means we won't have any of the troubles we had with ds1 due to dating.



D was really attentive for the first 5 minutes and really interested in what the tech was doing and the screen. But those 19 week ultrasounds go on forever so his interest was totally gone by the end when she looked for the parts lol I wasn't sure if d got it or not...but when we got to our playdate he wasn't long telling the name of his brother to everyone lol

Getting ready...

We're getting ready to go to the "big" ultrasound here now. It's an early morning appointment, but hopefully that will mean little wait time. I bought one of those monster energy drinks, something to jolt the baby into being active for the ultrasound. How do people drink these? Talk about gross!!! I bought the orange flavored one... and it friggin tastes like that crap they make you drink to check for diabetes lol

Check up

Only a 45 minute wait at Dr. K's office today. Not to bad all things considered! Another great check up, everything looks good!

BOLT

We took d to the theater to see BOLT today! Really great kids movie! Dh and I enjoyed it and loved the guinni pig character hehe D loved it but lost interest during some of the non action parts. So be expected from a 3 year old.

NL science center closed down :(

This weekend we were looking for some stuff to do and thought of the NL science center. Turns out it's closed down. The website says under construction and hasn't been updated since November. The phone number is disconnected. I tried to call 411 to see if there was alternate number... but they couldn't even find it in the listings. DH posted on the general boards and it is indeed closed. I wish they had of made some noise. I for one certainly would have rallied to help them get a little extra funding or what not. So sad :(

Immersion or not?

This is a huge topic of debate for a lot of people these days. I think we have pretty much decided on st Theresa's french immersion for d. Love the idea of walking / driving him to school and also they have the only string program in the city... so if he keeps the violin thing up that will be nice too!

From a parent perspective I look at it like this. If they go into early french immersion and they struggle or hate it or whatever... then they can always switch to mainstream English. But it doesn't swing the other way. From an ESL teacher perspective I simply feel the sooner the better!

There is of course late immersion and late french immersion has the advantage of the child being able to make the choice for themselves.. taking the decision making pressure off the parents lol

Oh and it doesn't hurt that statistically french immersion students on the average have demonstrated to perform better. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-004-x/200406/6923-eng.htm

We will have to sign d up this spring. Hopefully it's not a big issue to get him into the immersion program. I have heard some schools parents go to line up like 5am.

Sir cuts alot (scal) review

http://www.craftedge.com/

Figured I would review the sir cuts alot software for the cricut users on here. Not a lot of people know about the software or know of it but not alot about it. I was dead against buying anything that required cartridges... so be honest this was the selling point for me.

Cricut is a provo craft product and is in no way affiliated with sir cuts alot. The cartridges for cricut can be used with the scal program... in other words you can not add any cartridge images into the scal program.

The cost is $75us to download it right to your computer. For a little bit more you can have it shipped out on a cd to you. (I downloaded)

First off ... it works great and is worth every cent! I won't be buying any font cartridges EVER! And eventually I hope to not feel a desire for shape ones either. You do need one cartridge... as the cricut machine will not work without a cartridge with or without scal.

The cord required to hook your cricut up to your computer does not come with the cricut and it is not the regular usb cord that comes with your camera etc. Its called an a/b type and is the kind with one square end... if you have a printer... it likely uses the same cord. I picked up an extra cause unconnecting the printer just was not convenient for me. They aren't expensive.

There is a little computer know how required to getting the program working initially. You DO NOT need the cricut program "design studio" to run scal. However, most cricut machines will require the firmware to be updated and to do this you need to download the free trial of design studio (if you don't have it). There are great instructions for all of this right on the SCAL website.

You will also want to be familiar with the process of downloading fonts and dingbats and installing them on your computer. There are 1000's of free online resources out there. Most scrappers already do this for printing purposes anyways. The ttf fonts installed on your computer will automatically show in scal.

I had a slight problem at first... DH and i between us had an excessive amount of fonts ( like 4000 or something). So I had an initial problem with not being able to see certain fonts /ding bats i wanted to us. I just deleted a bunch of them... problem solved.

The scal program is really user friendly. There are pop up windows for selecting your font and you just type or select your item right on the screen. The screen is like a cutting mat... a big grid. So it is very easy to size your item (s). There are some screen shots here http://www.craftedge.com/products/screenshots.html

For the more involved... with scal you are not limited to the fonts and dingbats you find online, you can also make your own files using programs like abode illustrator or a free program called inkscape. I've played with this but haven't really had the time to get knee deep yet... it's on my to do list for this year. The products from these programs are call svg files.. and can be imported in scal. This getting to be very popular around the web it seems...people share svg files they have created and some people are even selling them now. I mainly want to learn how so i can divide up the layers of images (this is done for you on cartridges)... for example so a snowman's nose, hat etc are separate from the main image.

Making your own images is not something you need to have to know how to do... nor is it what makes the program worth the money. The limitless amount of fonts at your finger tips really is the seller!

I don't know if I've helped or made it sound extremely complicated. Once installed it is really used friendly. If anyone has any other question I can try and answer best i can... but I'm still learning lol

Cool Maternity Shirt

If they had this in black i might have to consider it lol