WIC Wednesday #1: Introduction

WIC is a government program that promotes a healthy eating lifestyle by providing nutritious foods, information on healthy eating, and breastfeeding/infant formula advice to low income mothers (pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding), infants and children (up to age 5). That's where the name comes from: Women Infant Children. Depending on the state, the food you get can differ slightly. To qualify for this program, you need to make below a certain income. To find out if your family qualifies, please check on the WIC website.

Living in Arizona, this is currently what we get each month, divided into 4 checks:

36 oz of cereal (About 2 boxes)
1 lb dry beans or 64 oz canned beans
3 lb cheese
2 dozen eggs
30 oz canned tuna or salmon
2 64oz containers of juice or 3 12oz frozen juice
9 half gallons of soymilk (you can opt to get cow milk as well)
16 oz grains (bread, brown rice or tortilla)
18 oz peanut butter
$10 worth of any combination of fruits or veggies (fresh or frozen)

Trying to save money and eat healthy, this program has really helped our family out. I found that while looking for recipes, it's really hard to find a gathered place that has delicious recipes that you can make using WIC items. Hence, I have decided to start WIC Wednesdays. Every Wednesday, I'll post a tried and approved recipe that I made. These recipes will not be entirely based on WIC food products only. That's not the point of the program. These recipes will be based of how using WIC food can be used in creative ways to make healthy eating fun and delicious.

Directory:
Pineapple Chicken (Freezer Friendly)

Toy Review! Infantino Grow-with-me Activity Gym and Ball Pit

We recently received the Infantino Grow-with-me Activity Gym and Ball Pit as a gift from one of Hubby's uncles. Might I say, coolest toy ever!

picture from Amazon.com

Baby Turtle is 2.5 months old. She fits across the diameter of the play mat perfectly right now. She absolutely loves the hanging sea creatures, especially the red crab and orange fish. We even do tummy time on this mat and she loves to look at the colorful animals printed. Every single time she's played with it so far has resulted in her sleeping out of exhaustion! A guaranteed hour of nap time, leaving me time to run around the house doing chores or relax.

I like this activity mat because of how colorful and full of patterns it is. Baby Turtle is never bored playing with it. There's always a new pattern to look at. Even the animals have different features. The crab has a baby mirror on one side and a tummy pattern on the other. The orange fish has crinkly fins and a textured loop beneath it. The purple octopus doubles as a rattle and has colorful ribbon tentacles. Lastly, the starfish is made of a crinkly material and has a hanging blue plastic star.

I try and rotate the animals so that she's not looking at the same one all the time. She loves grabbing the starfish toy. I wish there was another toy that had a dangling piece for her to grab, so I could put them on both sides of her.

Overall, this play mat is a great toy to have. At this stage (laying down and tummy time) there is plenty for Baby Turtle to look at. I will definitely have to add an update once she can sit and use the ball pit!

Passed out Baby Turtle

Passed out Baby Turtle and Hubby