#techtues ~~ Apps in Review ABC Song Piano By Kiboomu

Recently I was given the special chance to review an app, so it will be the first #techtues blog that I run!

Apps are a fairly new thing for the YuckMouth house, we've played around with a few but finding the right ones to either entertain the masses and teach them at the same time can be quite the battle. Luckily I've happened upon a few good sites like A4cwsn and Kiboomu! The app I'm reviewing today is from the ladies over at Kiboomu who I've had the pleasure of tweeting with, you should totally follow them, they are awesome!!

The app is called ABC Song Piano, its available on the iphone, ipad, and itouch. Its an age appropriate app for toddlers and preschoolers and awesome for special needs kids learning their alphabet. When I first got it open I fooled with the settings, checked out the four different options, but as soon as that song played all the kids came running to see what I was doing. I gave each a turn and of course as amazed at how easy it was for them to try out the different settings and then actually record themselves playing. The loved it! So the YuckMouth clan gives 7 thumbs up!

Once I shooed them all away, tried out the different game types. I really loved the ease of switching from one type to the other. The button tabs were all easy to see and use, and the song was hilarious to hear with the barn animal sound enabled.  The letters were brightly colored and easy to hear and see, and the pace was slow enough that even my 1yr old was able to handle it and press the keys to hear the sounds. I'd say it is a great starting app, and at a great price $1.99! You can view it on the Kiboomu apps page and purchase it on itunes. My kids loved it and I loved hearing them sing the ABC song and giggle together!

Thanks to Mommy Perks for giving me my first app to review!

People on a Lake, 3D Shark, Sept 2nd

I'm typing away on my computer when my older son walks into the room.  Since I have my headphones on (like I always do when i write) My son taps my leg while shouting Dadda (yes my son and older daughter call me Dadda) I take off my head set to listen what he has to say. He tells me he wants to see the movie where there are 7 people lost in a lake then there's a 3d shark eating them. I interrupt him.

ME: Did you just say there's a 3d shark in this movie?

My son looks at me confused. He continues to talk about how there's 7 people lost in a lake then there's 6 people then there's 5 people and this 3D shark attacks them. He continues to tell me it's like the Piranha movie but with a 3D shark eating everybody. I stop him again before he can continue.

Me: There you go again with this 3D shark. Why aren't the people in the movie 3D?

So this really confused him. He then tells me the movie comes out on September 2nd. So me not knowing what the hell he's talking about I go check out IMDB.com and look this 3D shark thingy up. The name of the movie is called "Shark 3D" (how original)

 Now I know many of you are probably asking why is my son of 8 asking me about wanting to see this R rated flick, and how did he know about the Piranha movie that came out last year. So it's like this, I show my kids movies that I believe they would probably see themselves late at night. Now I don't show them Porn or anything but if I want to watch a movie in this house they either like what I'm watching or they can go and watch cartoons. There's nothing wrong with cartoons, I watch tons and tons of toons ( I have 5 kids) But I know many people lecture me when I tell them my kids watched movies like "The Matrix" or "Blade" or even the movie "Piranha", def not movies for kids. I did make them close their eyes when there are always dirty scenes on tv. I just don't want my kids to be that kid who's never seen a R rated movie in high school and when they do a sleep over there not the odd kid out, or scared out of their mind after watching a R rated movie at the age of 18. Trust me; I've seen many people get freaked out from movies that they never watched before. I even experience sleeping with the lights on through out the whole house because of a few horror movies at my house that my girl never watched as a kid growing up. If the movie is too scary for my kids they leave the room but if it's not they stay and watch the whole movie. I'm a huge movie lover and I think my kids should experience every cinematic creativity there is out there and hopefully sparking that creative flow within themselves to come out as it did with their daddy:) No my kids ain’t weird like the kids from the movie "Village of the Dammed" but they are full of excitement and curiosity and know how to enjoy a good movie. By the end of the movie I'm usually left only with my older daughter who's def a movie lover just like her daddy:)

For Racer on His Birthday

Its been a odd month of sorts, the kind where everything that could go wrong does. If you've been reading my blog then you know that life lately hasn't been easy to say the least. Five of the YuckMouths have had birthdays, I've put on my brave mommy face and we celebrated the birth of my babies. For Racer I knew it would be different, it always has been. Big parties scare him, to many people set him off and lately he has a issue with eating sweets and getting dirty.

So today was his day, I left it up to him but it would be easy cause most of his day would be spent at school. I usually bake the kids their favorite cakes for their special days, but today it topped 103 and in a house with no A/C using the oven was out of the question. We bought donuts and put candles in them and sang happy birthday.

We id have some good news though! The book that the hubs has been working on is finally done and the proof came in today early. Racer was on cloud 9!

Now if you've never seen pics of him before he looks like the normal kid. Except this picture is different, I almost just made it a wordless Wednesday post because it speaks volumes for me....he's smiling. He never outright smiles, NEVER! Its always a smirk, or some weird half smile half "get this camera out of my face" look he gives me. That book he's holding there, its about him, the YM daddy wrote it for him! It was the best birthday present any of us could have asked for. If all goes well this might just get us out of the hole we are currently in.

So Happy Birthday to my baby! I was going to write a long letter about how you are special to me, how your progress everyday is something to celebrate! 

But I can't cry anymore right now, I need to celebrate and since I have girl parts writing a letter like that would have started the water works.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY One Sock!! I promise mommy won't always be sad! I love you!!

I promised the hubs I would link the book here....if you are interested in getting The Adventures of One Sock click here.

CreateSpace~~~ Why I Love to Hate You and Hate to Love You

So despite our current situation we have been trudging along, doing stuff to help keep our heads above water.

I promise Jill those jars are going out this weekend.....I'm a totally jerk about it seriously.

So here it is the YuckMouth daddy wrote a childrens book! WooHoo and all that good stuff I couldn't be more happier for him. Its funny and cute and its about Racer, he's excited, I'm excited and so is the hubs! Read his stuff here and you can now find him here on his very own tab  YuckMouth Daddy Blogs!

Ok so he got the copy back from the artist and he was ready to slap that bad boy into CreateSpace. For those that don't know that is amazons free self publishing site, the site itself is pretty easy to navigate through it should have been a breeze.

Boy was I wrong.

So lets keep this short and sweet cause I could blog for days about how screwed up this process has been. From not being the right size, to not having the correct cover PDF, then the pictures not being the right DPI. I live in the land of acronyms and these pissed me off to no end.

He's had to go back to the artist 4 times to get to fix stuff, first off being how CreateSpace has a 24 page minimum and the book is 22 pages!! Took us forever to figure out that  that was the problem, luckily the artist fixed it and it was off to the next section. The cover.....ugh! Lets just say I didn't know that it had to be a wrap around image. So after reworking the cover image A MILLION TIMES, I finally got something to work for it. Finished the process and waited for the approval email which can take up to 48hrs.

I'd say the hubs was excited, nervous and giddy, I was tired and ready to put my computer through the wall. Since he isn't very techie, and I am only in the sense that I like to "pretend" I know what I'm doing, I sat in front of the computer trying to figure this crap out.

So cut to 5 emails later, each one saying "Hey stupid! You got it wrong AGAIN!!" (ok so they didn't say that but still.....)

A email about how the cover had to be a wrap around image, duh...to having to then create a new cover, to the book not being sized right....fixed it AGAIN. Then BACK to the DPI problem...meanwhile this all creates a new restart for the 48hrs approval.

I've never hated my computer as much as I have right now!! I may never want to see the inside of a email inbox AGAIN!!

Anyways lets close this horror story with a "happy ending" (no perverts...not the kind you get at some seedy massage place) He finally got a "approval" email, I jumped on the computer ready to sell the heck out of this book! Ummmmm no sorry now we have to wait a WEEK to get the copy approval sent to him, THEN we can sell the heck out of this book. But I'm not keeping my hopes up.....knowing CreateSpace we'll have like another 48hr wait.

So in closing.....this book was loving written by the hubs but blood, sweat and tears have gone into creating it. Not my blood of course, but the hubs blood cause I may have to stab him once this is all done.

They All Came Out of Your....?

So as you all know I was able to go to BlogHer this past week.  I wasn't sure what to expect, I didn't follow may posts of the twitter stream in prep for my trip. I packed and went with the flow, even my weekend motto of "I don't care" was pretty easy going.

We ended up going to the parties over at BlogHer....actually we ended up looking really lost and some hot hotel guy with a deep voice said to us "ladies are you looking for the parties?" (thank you deep voice hot guy)

Now here is where it gets weird, and I have to say living in Los Angeles all my life, and the hubs working in Hollywood I've met all types of people. But this fruit cake takes the cake, we met her going down the ramp instead of using the stairs cause Caryns hot shoes we just couldn't walk down those steep steps. Now I expect to meet various people here, talk to lots and lots of them. But here is how this one went....

Hi I'm so and so, oh those are really cute shoes, I can't take the stairs either I've had some vodka....

And of course we make small talk, about our blogs and what we blog about and then it happens. The conversation I was actually dreading "YOU HAVE 7 KIDS?!!" I knew eventually it would happen, it was actually the one thing I prepped myself for. But the way this went...no lol there is no prep for this.

"You had 7 kids out your vajayjay?!!"

I won't bore you with the entire conversation, because it mostly went with the above statement over and over again in different forms. Leaving me and Caryn kind of stunned... I mean who wants to talk about my vajayjay all night? Hell I don't think I've ever even talked about it that much unless I was at the OBGYN lol.

We lost her at some point, at her request to talk to others about the fact that we had 7 kids out our vajayjays. (lol yea like I wanted to be that oddball everyone blogs about) Till she found us again! I swear we hadn't even been there 12hrs and already we had a stalker! With drink in hand she proceeded to again talk about the vajayjays , asking if we talked to anyone else about then, then to talk about tribes in third world countries who also have many kids apparently.

I have to admit that this drunk woman broke the ice for me. I was nervous about meeting new people...other bloggers, talking to product reps and companies. After the whole vajayjay talk though, I figured if NONE of them asked me about that I'd be perfectly happy.

So thank you crazy drunk vajayjay lady!

Most Wonderful Time of The Year

Okay so this summer has been really hot, I live in a house full of people (9) and with no AC in the house to keep everyone nice and fresh, and throw in a son with autism and another with adhd you can only imagine how it's been. From short tempers to outburst to unpatient kids to finding out the owner sold the house with out informing us, for once I heard good news on tv. It was a jingle i havent heard in such a long time that really made my day. The song was from the commercial where the father is gliding on the shopping cart filling it up with back to school supplies while his kids look unhappy, with the song "It's the most wonderful time of the year" playing in the background. When seeing this commercial I right away looked at the calendar and noticed that the kids only have 10 more days til school starts again. 

Yay! 5 out of 7 kids will be at school for the whole day! Now it's not like i want to get rid of my kids but a few hours of break is really needed. With no babysitters or any help from anyone, i don't get to have any free time to write. ever try writing with 3 or 4 kids jumping all over you? It's kind of hard at times. 

Someone once asked me how come I dont blog as much. I tell them i do, it just takes forever blogging while typing with one hand as I use the other hand to keep the kids from jumping on my keyboards. What I did to burn the kids out for the summer was take them with me on my 5 mile walk then go swimming for 2 hours. But many of you who have kids know that they get this sudden burst of energy late at night every night! 

So hopefully now school will burn them out and get these kids tired so when they come home everyone goes to bed at a decent time and not 11 pm or midnight. So if you havent heard the commercial with the jingle yet, trust me it's going to make everyone who has kids and waiting for them to go back to school very happy:)

YuckMouth House Displaced~~~ Part two

So our countdown has begun. The new owner came today with paperwork for us to look over and sign when we are ready. His company will serve us with a 60 day notice which is standard for CA. Meanwhile I've been looking and its kind of grim. No places that are decent for a family take as many people as we have, or pets. I'll be looking into "no-kill" shelters for the dogs which is just going to break everyones hearts.

But I still haven't given up hope, I still believe that it won't go down like this. I have faith that we will find a place for all of us and the dogs even if it means moving out of state. I refuse to give up hope.

I plan on keeping the blog updated for whats going on in the YuckMouth house. Still plan to sell my autism jars cause every jar I sell makes this house money. If not to help us move but to get Racer the stuff he needs to deal with his everyday life.

Not down or out just yet!