They sure do!  If you’re looking for a last minute Father’s Day gift from your child to their dad then we’ve got it, giggles included.

Daddies Do It Different is a very sweet account of the ways moms and dad’s do things differently from a little girl’s perspective.  She takes you through the day, showing how mom would get her dressed in clothes that coordinate, meanwhile when dad helps her it’s quite a different look.

A trip to the market with mommy involves sitting safely strapped into the shopping cart, reading nutritional labels and using coupons.  With daddy she talks about how they eat all the free food samples they can, he pushes the shopping cart like a race car driver and sticks things in his nose to make her laugh.

Later at the park her mom puts sunscreen on her face while her dad must show off his skills on the monkey bars resulting in an injury.  If your family functions anything like how some of ours do then a lot of these scenarios will resonate with you. 

When it happens in our own homes we’re guilty of rolling our eyes at this behavior but the book speaks the truth, daddies definitely do it differently than we do but our kids love almost every minute of the chaos so this Father’s Day we’re going to embrace it and encourage it when we gift this book!

Daddies Do It Different retails for $16.99 and due to the time of year is sold out on Amazon.com but is available at Barnesandnoble.com or at some wonderful neighborhood stores.  If you are local to the San Diego area, we found this great book at Geppetto’s in San Diego and Warwick’s books in La Jolla.

Stork Stack Review and Giveaway
At this point we can practically predict what will be on a baby registry.  Diaper pail and not enough refills, check.  Organic changing pad, check.  Video baby monitor, check. Sure, you can show up at the next baby shower toting a lovely infant play gym or wipe warmer but we have an idea that will make you the very savvy and creative shower guest.  Come bearing a Stork Stack.

What exactly is a Stork Stack?  To sum it up, it’s a box of mommy genius.  They send out a monthly curated selection of baby products tailored to your child’s stage in life.  Their stacks start from the third trimester and go up to age three. Yes, we know subscription services are all the rage these days but Stork Stack sets itself apart from the pack in a few different ways.

1) You will not only get unique items that most moms wouldn’t think to register for and will love.  You’ll also get amazing value out of your stack.  Trust us, this is not the first baby product subscription we have been sent to test but it’s the one we will endorse because the promised value is the real deal!

Here is what we found in our June Stack:

-Baby Banz adjustable sun hat to protect and accommodate ever growing noggins
–Boon Munch, a sleek little snack container
–BabyLegs legwarmers, easier diaper changes and great for keeping knees boo-boo free
–Earth Mama Angel Baby Body Butter to battle stretch marks and keep skin amazingly soft
–Earth Mama Angel Baby Happy Mama Spray, 4 fl oz oil for some (much needed) aroma therapy

Stork Stack sells the stack we received for $28.  They give the MSRP’s of all the items in a leaflet included in the box and since several of us are true businesswomen we did our due diligence on our stack.  We price checked each item to see if we could get a better deal or get close to Stork Stack’s price.

The total MSRP on all the items in our stack was just over $64. With our bargain hunting efforts we were only able to get the price down to $58 – still more than double the price of the Stork Stack, forget the work involved in hunting all those items down!

2) Stork Stack offers a Shower Stack which they ship every day and will allow you to show up at a baby shower with your gift in hand.  Most other services will only give you a piece of paper with the promise of a gift in the future….lame!

The items in the Shower Stack are set so there is no mystery as to what you are giving and you’ll know exactly what is inside the box you present to the mom-to-be. You can also add on extra months to extend the giving and brighten that mommy’s day when she’s dealing with a two month old who isn’t sleeping and the newness of baby joy has worn off a bit.

3) The Stork Stack team is fiercely committed to their customers and their charitable causes.  They don’t offer to donate some measly portion of the profits of Stork Stack to some unheard of cause. Instead their promise is to donate 1 stack for every 3 month subscription, 2 stacks for ever 6 month subscription and 3 stacks for every 12 month subscription.  They donate to two wonderful charities that we absolutely love, Operation Showers of Appreciation and Baby Buggy.

Stork Stack also believes in hands on customer service.  We didn’t receive some generic email that our stack was shipping.  We received a personal email from their team with tracking information.  When we opened our stack there was a handwritten note to us.  Rumor even has it that they hand delivered the stacks in their hometown of Chicago.  How sweet is that??

You can see more about Stork Stack and order your own Stack or Shower Stack here: Get my Stork Stack

We told you about the Aqueduck before but if you missed our review then here it is along with a great giveaway including the Aqudeuck and other great products courtesy of Mompact.com

If you have a toddler or have even taken care of one for a day, then you are familiar with the struggles of hand washing.  First of all,  they don’t particularly love doing it and have to be reminded constantly.  Second, even with the aid of a step stool you often wind up having to lift them up just to be able to get their hands under the water.  The bottom line is it’s uncomfortable for all parties involved.

Aqueduck in Aqua Color

Enter the Aqueduck by Peachy, a forehead smacking “Why on Earth didn’t I think of this!!” mom-invented product.  It consists of a duck bill shaped faucet extender that slips right on over your faucet and allows the flow of water to reach much closer to where your child is positioned.  It completely eliminates the need to perform the over-the-sink-hover that we are all too familiar with.

We did the 3 second install of the Aqueduck while our toddler tester was at school.  All you do is smush the sides of the aqua colored part in a bit and slip it over the faucet of your sink.  The aqua (or pink) part is silicone like and stretches to fit securely and stay on.   The only instance in which this could be difficult is if you have really awkwardly shaped faucet.

Upon arrival at home and being forced to wash her hands before eating a snack we heard “Mom, look at what I got!  It’s just for me!” She was so excited that it was one of the first times we didn’t have to lecture her about rubbing the soap in and rinsing thoroughly.

Our Modified Aqueduck

Since we can never just let things be the way they are and because our toddler tester fell so in love with the Aqueduck we decided to use some googly eyes and add to his personality.  We just purchased them in a craft store and hot glued them on.  

The Aqueduck really is a wonderfully thought out and practical solution to an age old problem.  If the Aqueduck itself wasn’t enough, Peachy  also gives you a little temporary tattoo of their cute little mascot.  We decided to use it as a reward after a week of remembering to wash hands without any parental reminders.  Our little Toddler Tester just earned hers and is all too excited about it.

Pink Aqueduck with tattoo

The Aqueduck comes in Aqua, Pink and for parents who are concerned about making all their sinks look like the kids took over a nicely camouflaged  silver color.  We only wish they were installed in every public restroom – maybe one day!

You can purchase the Aqueduck for the very reasonable price of $12.99 from Peachy right here: Purchase the Aqueduck 

And even better you can win an Aqueduck along with some other great products below

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We’ve got a little Saturday morning ritual. We take some of the kid testers out to breakfast as a group and then we all go to the local farmers market to pick up fresh strawberries, avocados, pastas and flowers.  We love that we get super fresh local and organic food there and our kids love the buzz and excitement of an open air market.

While it’s fun for all, sometimes it feels like herding sheep trying to keep them together while we pick the best produce.  We were browsing the shelves of our favorite local toy store Geppetto’s when we discovered Let’s Go to the Farmers’ Market and it has become an adorable tool to up the educational value of our local farmers’ market and keep our kids busy so we can get our shopping done.

Let’s Go to the Farmers’ Market consists of:

– 1 super cute reusable tote that packs up into a little strawberry (obviously a highlight)
-a book about farming, the seasons of different foods and how to pick the best produce
-activity cards for things to conduct scavenger hunts for things like various root vegetables, items that start with a certain letter, citrus fruits etc
-a pad for shopping lists to write items on and check them off

All kids love manning a list and being in charge of it so the pad was a winner from the start.  Our little ones enjoyed having their own special missions from the activity cards while shopping and they provided an excellent distraction from bickering, strawberry squishing and just generally running amok.

We mommies in turn were able to grab the things we needed while following along in the pursuit of finding 4 different types of potatoes.  We even got our kids to help carry some of the lighter items using their new found “magic” strawberry.

Let’s Go to the Farmers’ Market retails for $14.99 and makes a fantastic gift to teach kids about healthy eating. If you live in San Diego you can find it at your local Geppetto’s.  If not it’s available on Amazon.com right here: Let’s Go to the Farmers’ Market

You know you are doing something right when your toddler can identify a wombat, a platypus and a tapir without hesitation. Impressive right?  While we would love to steal the credit for these acts of animal genius we have to give credit where it is due.

About a year ago we picked up a few of Safari Ltd’s TOOBs and our kids fell in love with them.  Their miniature collectible figurines are just the right size for small people to examine, line up, ask questions about and take absolutely everywhere. 

They come in a huge variety of animals and themes to suit any child’s obsession of the moment or long term interests.  Some of our favorites are the Rainforest TOOB, Land Down Under TOOB, and Farm Mega TOOB.

We were excited when the folks at Safari Ltd. let us know about their new Safariology collection of products like the Life Cycle items.  They are similar in size to the figurines from their TOOBs but they take learning to the next level and illustrate the various stages of life for sea turtles, green bean plants, monarch butterflies, frogs and honey bees.

Safari Ltd sent us the Life Cycle of a Green Bean Plant set to test out with our kids and their timing could not have been more perfect.  We had just planted seeds for a window garden and had tenacious preschoolers wanting to know what was happening with their newly planted beans.

The Safari Ltd set was a fantastic tool to explain to our kids what was going on underneath the soil during those agonizing days of waiting.  We talked about the different stages the bean plant would go through and they were able to have touchable, realistic visuals for the planted seed, germination, a seedling and a mature plant. Not to mention they have now added the word germination to their ever growing vocabularies!

We think the TOOBs and Life Cycle sets make awesome under the radar teaching tools to keep your child’s brain active throughout the Summer as well as the rest of the year.  You can find them on Safari Ltd.’s site for $8.99 here: Safariology Life Cycle

We are not big believers in letting kids become TV and video game vegetables.  Exception – long airplane rides.  It’s our last resort of course, but realistically there are only so many things you can do on a 5-15 hour flight to pass the time while keeping your kids quiet and confined to a space that most adults can’t handle.

When the drawing, tiny toy and travel game playing has run its course you will want to have a pair of awesome headphones at your disposal.  Our favorite are the Kidz Gear Headphones

These were not the first or second kinds of headphones we tried, but they are the best ones we found for little kids.  First we tried another brand that makes a suite of electronics for small children and even with the volume at the highest setting we could barely hear the sound at all.  That was sitting in our living room, forget being on an airplane with engine noise. 

Then we tried a pair with licensed characters on them that had a reasonable volume range but were complete junk as far as quality and durability.
Finally we found  Kidz Gear Headphones and now we tell everyone we know to just buy these from the get go. 

Kidz Gear Headphones are for ages 2 and up.  They are over headphones so they are not very compact, however they are made for tiny heads so they are still considerably smaller than an adult pair.  They have a full range of size adjustment so that we could fit them on a 2 year old’s head comfortably as well as some of our Mommy Testers.  Most headphones that are advertised for kids really don’t fit for those under 5 and constantly have to be repositioned on their ears – not these ones!

Kidz Gear Headphones are designed to make sure that your child cannot accidentally blast the volume, causing ear damage.  However unlike the first pair we mentioned, there is enough adjustment to allow you to ensure that the volume will be loud enough to hear the audio whether it’s softer spoken audio books or action movies.

We found them to be both comfy and sturdy.  There is ample padding around the ears and the headband part flexes and handles abuse pretty well.  They were comfortable enough to have one of our Kid Testers nap on the plane while wearing them to avoid being woken up by beverage services and crying babies.  They also survived  a lot of being tossed around and carelessly squished into carry on bags and have survived for many flights.

Kidz Gear Headphones retail for about $20 and for years of use we think that’s a bargain.  You can find them here: Kidz Gear Headphones