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At around 4:13PM CST today, Mommy lost her mucous plug! (as if the title wasn’t a dead give away) It’s all getting started! Jayden’s almost here! Jayden’s almost here! Jayden’s almost here!

Now before anyone comes along to burst our excitement bubble, we know that this could mean nothing. It could be weeks before she goes into labor. But she could also go into labor as I’m writing this post. So we’re just on high alert right now as anything could happen!

And by the way, I had the graceful pleasure of having her run up to me, with tissue and mucous in hand, and shove it in my face to show me. I think I almost lost my lunch. So since it’s so gross looking, and coupling that with the fact that I just can’t write a post without including some sort of a visual aid, I’ve decided to include this picture to go along with the good news:

I received some Mother’s Day gift ideas from HP. With Mother’s Day being right around the corner, I thought I’d share!

HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center: One of the many responsibilities that fall on Mom is making sure that all of her family’s memories are captured and preserved year-round. This Mother’s Day, why not help her out by giving her the HP Photosmart A826 Home Photo Center. This break-through printer will create keepsakes on the spot with a huge 7.0-inch color touchscreen and 100-sheet internal paper tray that makes it easy to create personalized greeting cards and custom photos by the batch all without a PC (just insert your camera’s memory card). In addition to the added convenience of printing at home, you can add personalized text, frames and clipart to photos, album pages, and personalized greeting cards – even write and draw directly on photos using the included stylus. With more than 200 frames, clipart and graphics you can personalize your Mother’s Day memories and all the family’s treasured experiences right in the printer and print them out for everyone to enjoy all throughout the year.

HP Activity Center: Breakfast in bed for Mom usually consists of toast, juice and a flower in a vase but this year let the HP Activity Center help you put a new twists on this and other traditional Mother’s Day routines. This year, why not transform Mom’s bedroom into a French countryside suite with customizable menus, a decorative place mat, table cards, and more! It’s easy with the HP Activity Center’s free downloadable and printable templates. With easy to follow instructions you can beautify any ordinary juice glass with a personalized wrap or present the morning’s feast in style with a customized French country themed menu with your own items and descriptions.

With the HP Activity Center, you can make Mother’s Day truly special with 20 easy-to-make projects including themed photo cards, year-at-a-glace photo calendars, Mother’s Day photo frames and even beautiful paper flowers. With simple instructions on how to download and customize the templates as well as information on all the HP supplies you’ll need to create your project, the HP Activity Center offers free and creative gifts all with the click of a mouse.

Sterling Silver Jewelry: Put a smile on Mom’s face by combining two of her favorite things–family photos and jewelry! Snapfish offers customizable sterling silver jewelry which is perfect for making Mom feel appreciated on her special day. Snapfish users can easily and affordably turn family photos into wearable art by personalizing a sterling silver bracelet or necklace with photos that will warm her heart for less than $40 (a great project dad and child can do together). Additionally, the custom jewelry comes beautifully packaged in a presentation gift box.

Photo Books: What better way to make Mom feel special than to create a photo book full of favorite snapshots capturing your family’s memorable moments? Snapfish offers a full line of photo books in a range of sizes, covers and designs to celebrate Mom. Photo book prices range from $4.99 to $49.99. These professionally-bound books let you tell your stories by using your personal photos to illustrate all the special memories made with Mom. Snapfish’s latest additions to its line of photo books include Signature Photo Books – 12 x 12-inches starting at $49.99, and Storybooks with personalized dust jackets – 8 x 8-inches starting at $24.99.

For more information about other great HP products and supplies for this Mother’s Day, visit the HP Home & Home Office Store at www.hpshopping.com.

Today marks 37 weeks and as Daddy says, “It’s crunch time!”. On Tuesday I had my cervix checked and was told I was 1 CM dilated! The week before I wasn’t and I know a trip to the mall has something to do with the progress. During that trip, my back and pelvic area ached so bad that I could hardly even move my legs to walk anymore. My midwife said that I’m doing good and Jayden will probably come early. I’m thinking it’s possible since my due date’s prediction had to be based on ultrasound and not my last period. During conception, I was coming off of Depo Provera, so it had my cycles all out of wack. I’m hoping Jayden comes early though because the suspense is killing me and I’m not liking the cons to being pregnant. I don’t want to play pregnant anymore, lol.

Tomorrow I’ll get started on laundry and sanitizing. I had planned on organizing his little clothes days ago, but realized we needed some mild detergent to wash them in and mesh lingerie bags to keep from losing socks, mits, and caps. Today we did some shopping for those things and others that we’ll need for Jayden’s arrival. Of course we’ll be back in the stores after his arrival because we’re going to realize that we forgot something.

I’m trying to take it easy before my mother gets here on the 25th. She’s getting antsy. Once she arrives, I’m going to TRY to walk my butt off. It’s kinda hard walking with a baby’s head lodged into your crotch though, lol. Today I’ve been crampy. I just hope Jayden at least holds out until we cast my belly. If he comes before we cast my belly, he will never hear the end of it!

Here is the bedding and crib that we have for Jayden’s nursery:

For those that are wondering why much hasn’t been said about the nursery, it’s because we won’t be setting up a nursery until we move this summer. Jayden will be here in May, or April, then we’ll be moving between June and August. So no point in making things all pretty only to take them back down.

Since the end is near, I’ll try to pop in more often with updates. Expect a few more posts per day, which will be updates, random thoughts from Daddy or me, product reviews, and giveaways. We have quite a few giveaways in queue. That all being said, hold on to your computers and fire up those feed readers! It’s going to be pretty busy here on Mommy Daddy Blog!

The winner of this giveaway is announced at the bottom of this post.

When it comes to internet passwords, what are your methods for keeping track of them? Sometimes it’s easy to use the same password for each account that you own. At times that is impossible. Sometimes your password won’t pass the security requirements because of repetitive characters, not enough characters, or not enough numbers. The list goes on. How frustrating is that? I tend to get out of these battles by tossing x’s in various spots of my passwords, but then this makes them hard to remember…

Quite a few websites provide garbled passwords when you sign up for accounts that you are unable to change. As of now, I still haven’t figured out how to change my StumbleUpon password. For a while I kept clicking “forgot password”. The same went for my domain registrar accounts. I wrote these passwords down on scraps and sticky notes, but of course I kept losing them each time I cleaned up my workspace.

The Internet Password Organizer is a useful way to safely and securely store all of your passwords. 122 reinforced tabbed pages provide instant access to login credentials. Each page is set up kind of like an address book but provides space to record web page, username, password, and notes. I like to use my Internet Password Organizer primarily to record my domain registrar and hosting accounts as well as affiliate program logins. As of late I’ve been forgetting my usernames to accounts since some of my account usernames were also created randomly. So Internet Password Organizer has helped me out with remembering my usernames as well.

Towards the back of the Internet Password Organizer there’s a bonus section that provides space for writing down internet service provider and home network information as well as software license information and additional notes pertaining to your computer. It would have helped if I had this book when I set up my mother’s home wireless network a few years ago. I wrote the details down on a piece of paper and now I don’t remember the network password needed to login. The password is stored on my laptop but if I get a new laptop or someone else needed to use their laptop in her house, they won’t be able to since I forgot the password. Eventually I’m going to have to reconfigure everything and this time write the password down in my Internet Password Organizer.

Interested in what the inside of an Internet Password Organizer looks like? Take a look inside. As a safety precaution I suggest that Internet Password Organizer be locked up in the home office for safe keeping.

April is National Autism Awareness Month. In honor of National Autism Awareness Month, Innovention Lab, Inc. will be donating $1 to Autism Speaks for each Internet Password Organizer purchased from internetpasswordorganizer.com. For every thousand books sold Innovention Lab, Inc will also donate an additional $1,000.

GIVEAWAY!: I have ONE (1) Internet Password Organizer up for grabs! Leave a comment on this post telling me how you and/or your family will benefit from using Internet Password Organizer. The giveaway will end and comments will be closed on April 24th 27th 2008 at 7PM CST.

And the winner is…

#42 Krista! Congratulations Krista! We’ll be getting in contact with you shortly. Thank you everyone for entering our giveaway! If you’d like to be included in future giveaways here on Mommy Daddy Blog, be sure to subscribe to our feed!

Typically, when you think of Avery shipping Labels, what uses for them usually come to mind? Of course, they are used as those pieces of paper that you slap on packages when you ship them at the the post office. But did you know that there are many other uses for shipping labels as well?

Here are some examples of what we have done with our shipping labels:
- Used them as shipping labels of course!
- Labeled rubber maid bins with them.
- When I was a consultant for The Body Shop, I created a template with my contact info on them. Then I printed, cut, and stuck them on my seasonal catalogs.
- Instead of writing out over 50 baby shower invitations, I created a template with the RSVP info, printed, cut, and stuck them on top of the blank fields. Of course when I write out all of the Thank You cards, it won’t be as easy since I want to write something personal to each person.

These are the ways that we have used regular ‘ol shipping labels, so imagine what could be done with generic Avery labels of different sizes. I have a project in mind. When we move into our new place this summer, I’ll get to do my “belated” nesting. To organize storage drawers I can label each drawer with 1″ circle Avery labels.

Here is an example of some labels that I designed for Jayden’s future nursery, using 1″ circle Avery label templates. We’re going with a jungle theme, so I used the colors from the nursery bedding and created these sample labels in Adobe Photoshop. I love how they came out. I can’t wait to see what they look like on print.

Now you see the power of Avery labels, so where can you find them? When it comes to Avery labels or office supplies in general, I’ve found that it is best to shop around online and conduct price comparisons. I have gone to many office supply stores to be let down at the sight of outrageous prices, therefore I don’t even bother buying from them. Worldlabel.com specializes in inkjet and Laser labels at wholesale prices. For example, the 1″ circle Avery adhesive labels that I plan on using to label Jayden’s nursery drawers start at $32.95 per 6,300 labels at Worldlabel.com in comparison to $58.70 at competing office supply stores. If you’re worried about shipping cost, standard shipping for 6,300 circle Avery adhesive labels is only $5, so which route would you choose? Hopefully the frugal one.