Toddler Approved is 9 years old!
(Make sure to scroll down for our special birthday giveaway!)
Hi! I'm Kristina, the mom behind Toddler Approved. I love simple kids activities, chocolate, and making friends. I have four crazy kids ages 2,6,8,and 10.
Nine years ago we had just moved to a new town in the East Bay of San Francisco. It was a cold and rainy winter and I had an 18-month-old who didn't sleep and I felt like we were in a constant power struggle over EVERYTHING.
Ironically, look how young and less tired I look here. LOL. Little did I know about all of the adventures ahead.
Days were so long. We spent our free time watching cars out the window and wandering up and down the escalators at the mall. I was bored out of my mind, so I started researching activities to do with toddlers. Back then I mostly used actual books to find inspiration, along with posts from Allie at No Time for Flashcards and Marie from Make and Takes.
On January 8, 2010 at 11:55am, I wrote my first post for Toddler Approved. Andrew was probably watching his favorite Thomas the Train episode with Boulder in it while I took a much needed computer break.
My first post wasn't anything special, but looking back now, I was totally ahead of my time (LOL), since my first activity was a simple "sensory bin."
From that day onward for the next several years, I wrote a blog post almost daily... sometimes more than once a day.
I went through a period of depression when we first moved and were trying to get pregnant with Catie. The community of women that I became apart of when I started blogging saved my sanity and many of them are still some of my favorite people.
Since then, our family has grown and I have learned so much.
The toddler activities I shared then and that I still share now have the same goal -- they are simple activities to help you have fun with your toddler while embedding a little learning.
Here are a few more Toddler Approved activities from the first month or so that I began posting on this website. These activities are still popular 9 years later.
Do we have any original followers still around 9 years later?
In honor of our Toddler Approved Birthday, we're having a special GIVEAWAY! I appreciate you all so much and wish we could get together and have a giant play date for our birthday with a bunch of chocolate treats.
Instead, I'm giving away one random Toddler Approved fan a $100 Amazon Gift Card. You can use it to buy some fun books for the new year, some organizing tubs if you're obsessed with Marie Kondo like me, or even something fun that somehow didn't make it to you this Christmas.
Traditionally our Toddler Approved fans aren't huge giveaway fans, which means the likelihood of you winning is way higher than in most giveaways!
You can find the rules and entry info by clicking on the link below. Good luck! You must have a working email address to enter and must respond within 2 days of us announcing the winner. The giveaway runs from today until 11:59 PST on Friday, January 11th. The giveaway winner will be announced here on this post and on social media on Saturday, January 12th. This giveaway is in no way endorsed by Instagram or Facebook or Amazon.
Thanks for helping me celebrate our birthday in a fun way!
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