The Most Stylish Baby in Town

One thing I discovered when my children were first born is that it's really really easy to find decor for children's rooms in pastel colors and "classic" motifs like trains or teddy bears, but it's not so easy to find things that appeal to a grown-up sense of whimsy and style while still looking baby appropriate.

Enter AllModernBaby.com. This site carries everything from decorations to nursery furniture to strollers--basically every thing your baby could ever need. All the high end brands like Maclaren and Bugaboo are there, and if you spend some time looking through the hundreds of pages of baby goods they have on offer, you will find a whole world of wonderfully child-friendly products in styles that will suit the most current tastes.

As the name of the site suggests, the designs are modern -- in face, I'd call them modern with a retro feel. You'll find lots of chocolate brown mixed with fern green, or Wedgwood blue with cream and tan, or glossy red. Furniture and accessories have sleek lines, and there are pages and pages of classy pieces that you will use for years. There are even pages of things for yourself.

I am personally pining for a Stokke high chair, wishing I'd known such a thing existed back when my first child was an infant. If I'd gotten it then, it would have done duty already for five years as a fabulously convertible seat. Ingeniously, both seat and footrest adjust in height, and there are multiple padded seat/strap systems that vary according to the age of the child you have. In the end, the chair is suitable for infant feeding, toddler messes, and preschoolers who need to be raised up to the height of the table. Now, of course, it seems a little too late for me, although I am sure it would do much to restrain Daughter and help her work on her table manners if she had a chair like this one to put her at the proper height at dinner. This is precisely the sort of thing I think is worth spending more money on, since it will do duty for multiple chairs and last so much longer than anything that's not designed to be convertible.

I also love their washable, affordable polypropylene floor mats in bright colors. These would be great under a high chair to protect the floor from wayward bits of food from a just-learning-to-eat baby, or under an easel in the playroom, or anyplace else where there is risk of spillage. Honestly, I just might make an excuse to find a spot for one of them because they're so brightly cheerful without containing a single set of ABC's in their design.

Here's where this review gets exciting for you.

AllModernBaby offered me $75 worth of credit on the site to check out some of the products for myself, but since my kids are past the baby stage, I asked them if I could give away the gift certificate instead -- and AllModernBaby was happy to oblige.

All you have to do to enter to win $75 to spend on your own fabulous baby gear is go check out the site, and then leave me a comment below telling me what something you love there.

For an additional entry, tweet the contest with a link back to this page, and then come back here and leave another comment that includes a link to your tweet.

The fine print: Limit two contest entries per person. Giveaway open to those in the US and Canada. Contest will remain open for one week. The winner will be chosen by random.org and announced on Monday morning, July 27. Please be sure to leave your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you win.

The Syms Meets Schoolhouse Rock

A full disclaimer is certainly necessary right up front: I am terrible at video games. Anything newer than PacMan is beyond me. I don't get the key strokes, the movements of the characters make me dizzy, and I am generally more annoyed than entertained by almost everything about them.

By contrast, my son takes after his father. At five years old, Son scores in the 65-75% range playing the guitar in Daddy's Rock Band. He has great fun jumping around like crazy on the Dance Dance Revolution pad. He thinks Sonic Tennis is awesome. And, of course, he loves to play things on the computer if I let him. Noggin games are approved by me as not too violent for him. The one learning system game I set him up with a few months ago was a big hit.

So when a representative from JumpStart contacted me with an offer for a free trial, I was delighted to let Son explore another learning system/computer video game, particularly since he is on the verge of going to Kindergarten, and I figured honing some skills this summer might be a good idea.

Although my initial impression of JumpStart was not stellar, a little fortitude and some experimentation got me through the initial video-game learning curve. And now, I can whole-heartedly say that we LOVE this system in our house.

Because that there are all sorts of online games out there purporting to be educational, I think it's worth it to know what is good and bad about any given system, so I'm going to tell you exactly how we found it. The short version of what follows is that although there are some drawbacks to this system in terms of how intuitive (or not) the play is, the down-loadable JumpStart worlds absolutely cannot be beat for keeping children engaged in the learning that they are doing online.

You should know that there are games you can play online through JumpStart, as well as ones you download. The latter are much more involved, both in the structure of the games and the skills you learn. You can try out some things for free online, but the downloadable games (which are far better) require a membership.

Here are the PROS

* The (free) educational games on the JumpStart site have two sets of level controls. You choose a level for the content that corresponds to your child's knowledge about, say, addition, and then you also choose a level for the video game play that corresponds to how good your child is at gaming skills. I, for example, can rock all the highest levels in the reading games (duh, they only go up to third grade skills), but even on "easy" settings for game play, I still find myself irritated and befuddled by the video game tasks. I just don't like trotting around virtual worlds looking for stuff -- but that's not JumpStart's fault. And I really appreciate that they have figured out that just because a kid is advanced in reading, she may not be good at jumping barrels using key-strokes, or vice versa.

* The graphics are good, and the 3-D worlds are customizable, so you can build a character, paint the scenery, and so on, which makes the kids feel invested.

* The learning interfaces limit your child's ability to just play shoot 'em up. For example, one game asks you to fly through the hoops containing the correct answer and blast the incorrect answers with your jetpack. But you only get five "blasts" before you run out and thereafter can only seek correct answers. So you can't turn what is supposed to be a game about matching math sets into one that's about shooting asteroids (which my five year old totally would do if he could, since watching asteroids blow up seems cool to him, while the long term goal of staying on task so that he can accumulate points to buy things in a virtual world is not a concept he's ever encountered).

* It is extremely well-designed and thoughtful as a virtual world for young children. There is no violence (unless you count throwing pies at things violent), no innuendo, no danger of encountering any strangers online since each account is separate. The adventures are fun and engaging, and the play options are widely varied.

* The downloadable games have a whole series of units with carefully sequenced lessons that build upon previous knowledge. There are lessons in math, sets, logic, letters and reading that each involve a different kind of game, so that things don't get stale.

* A portion of the system is available for free, and it is also possible to sign up for a free trial of the subscription parts of the service too. This means that you can check out the whole thing, poke around, experiment, and really see if your child falls in love before you commit to a monthly fee. That is a huge bonus in my book.


Here are the CONS

* There seem to be glitches in the online (for free) games. In the first two hours of play, we encountered instructions to "follow the trail of yellow lanterns," spent ages grasping for the only yellow lantern we could find, and then finally found a trail of PURPLE lanterns that would lead us to the right place. That was annoying, but surmountable. Much more disheartening, however, were the errors in the learning games. Supposed to locate shields with the "fffff" sound on them, Son lost many points for blasting shields marked with the letter "m" only to discover that ALL the shields were marked "m," but that if you got close enough, the voice over would tell you that that shield was actually supposed to be the letter "d" or "f" or "p" or whatever. On an adjectives game I tried, all the shields were marked "ripe" although the voice over would tell me that actually some of them were supposed to read "shiny" or "eats" or "quickly" or whatever. Obviously, it is impossible to get the right answers if the game itself is displaying letters and words that don't match what it thinks it's displaying. We have not had these kinds of problems with the games we downloaded, but we have had them on multiple occasions with the games we've tried to play online.

* Nothing about getting around in this world is intuitive to me. Now, I think if you are a gamer, your experience would be completely different from mine. So I think the fair critique here is that this system is very video-gamey, which is to say that if you play other types of virtual world games, you will no doubt be able to get around because you are used to how these maps work, to assuming you are supposed to click people to get them to talk to you, and to locating items "by the tree," for example. But I, who have little-to-no gaming experience, found myself completely unable to navigate my way around the Storyland that was supposed to be for preschoolers. After 20 minutes there, unable to find any hint of the "letter trail" I was supposed to follow, I gave up. Probably, if my husband had been playing, he would have been able to figure this out. But what that suggests is that if your child does not have a parent who understands the assumptions and common moves that underlie virtual world games, then your child might have a frustrating time getting around in this one.

* You have to download the actual learning game worlds. The "Adventureland" that is obvious and easy to get to, and the map that you start with, lets you into arcade style games (car racing, etc.) and a (less interesting) learning game. All the others must be downloaded separately. It's not hard to do; it's just hard to realize that that is what you need to do, since the instructions at start up do not make that clear. Hence, my child got all sucked into arcade racing and other fun games before I could even find anything educational.

* The system saves your progress to your C drive rather than to its server. This is a drawback if you want your child to be able to play on more than one computer, since all his/her progress will only be stored on one. It also means that if your computer crashes, or you install a new operating system, all of your child's progress will be lost. Since it took my son over an hour just to get through the "training" that would let him into Adventureland to start playing a learning adventure, I would imagine that such a loss would be a disaster for a child who has been playing for months, amassing points, collecting stuff, and working through a curriculum.

* To move up from one level to the next in the system, you have to work your way through all the required tasks, some of which are educational lessons and others of which are video-game style tasks involving doing jobs or locating objects in the virtual world. There are nominal benefits in the gaming tasks, which are supposedly about helping your virtual friends, for example, but I wish the system had a smaller proportion of these hoops to jump through. I think Son spends as much time on these game parts as on the educational parts of each unit.


Here is the overall assessment

I think JumpStart is a great activity for children if you are looking for something engaging and safe online. It is a fantastic alternative to traditional video games in that there is no destruction, violence or mayhem, and there are great lessons that help reinforce math and reading concepts. If you go into thinking of it as fun, interactive games that may also result in your child learning something, then I think you will be more than delighted. At $7.99 per month, it costs less than taking your child to one movie, and it's far more educational. If you purchase it thinking it will be a serious supplement to your child's curriculum, then I would imagine some frustration with the amount of set-up time and the many possibilities for online play here that do not involve academic lessons.

Although I think that overall this system could be a little less game-y for my taste, my son ADORES it. He is excited every time he earns a new badge; he is able to work his way through the curriculum and stay engaged. This one has real lasting power, and I can imagine him playing it for months.

Should you get it? YES! But skip the online (free) games, which are annoyingly complicated and have a low learning-gaming ratio, and go straight to the downloadable ones, which are rich, interesting, thoughtfully designed as learning games. Have a little patience for the long download and set up/orientation process, and you will be richly rewarded in the end.

Musicals for the Prescool Set?

I have always loved theater. In high school and college, I dabbled in acting, made costumes, ran shows backstage. Whenever I travel to a city, I make a point to see a production of something. The summer I was in London for three weeks, I saw four plays.

I've also done my best to get my children interested in theater. I take them to local productions, university theater department plays, puppet-based theatricals, basically any place that I think the show itself is appropriate for small ones. It never ceases to amaze me, although we've been to a fair amount of theater, how well they can pay attention and maintain a respectful silence.

But for me it's always a gamble: will my three- and five-year-olds behave themselves in a "grown-up" venue?

So, I was quick to jump at the offer of promotional tickets to the traveling production of Thomas and Friends Live Onstage, which is perhaps the only BIG show I know that is explicitly aimed at the preschool set. (Even Disney on Ice is, I think, aimed at children in the 4-7 age range.) And then, today, off we went.

Here's what my son (age 5) had to say about the show: "It was good; I liked it." When pressed to clarify what he liked about it, he replied with a smile, "Everything." My daughter clapped along, made Thomas toot whistle sounds, bobbed her head to the music, laughed a lot. In short, both of them were thoroughly entertained.

My husband and I, on the other hand? Not quite so much. Sure, it was really fun to watch the children having such a good time, but the plot of the show itself was hardly scintillating (a circus is coming to town, and Thomas keeps messing things up by trying to be helpful). And the entire experience was LOUD. L-O-U-D, *loud* loud LOUD.

Part of the noise was due to the incessant chatter of the three-year-old audience. "Where's Harold? Where's Harold? Harold? Harold! Haaaarrrrrooolllllddddd!" chanted a little one in the row in front of us. It was pretty cute in the singular. But multiply it by the hundreds of people in the audience, and it made sense why the cast had to have the volume turned up so exceedingly loud on their microphones. Between the chattering audience, the shout-singing cast, and the numbing plot, I was glad when the two hours were over.

To be fair, I find the television episodes of Thomas a little odd and not that compelling either. And I realize that what is compelling to a parent is often precisely the opposite of what will be enrapturing to a pre-schooler. But I also think that the best productions aimed at children, particularly very young ones, contain elements intended for adult appreciation -- excellent skating, if that's your thing, or fancy footwork in the choreography, or an intriguing plot, or witty dialogue.

This show had, I must say, fantastic trains. Apart from the excellent fact that their faces were mobile, the engines chugging across the stage look exactly like the tiny, shiny plastic ones in the battery-operated Thomas line. But these engines onstage were big enough for full-grown humans to drive as conductors. That was pretty amazing.

In short, my recommendation would be to take the little ones to this show if you personally enjoy the animated episodes. It really is just like an episode come to life. If you don't love Thomas on tv yourself, but your little ones do, then take them for the joy of watching the joy on their faces. That is certainly not valueless. Just don't go expecting a show pitched at adults. Because, really, your three-year-old has different taste than you do.

Math Was Never This Much Fun Back When I Was Young

My son just turned five and has deep and heartfelt longings to start Kindergarten. I think, if I could get the information out of him, that a large part of what he longs for is a day at school during which no one forces him to lie down on a cot to take a nap.

But we did have a very telling conversation a few weeks ago, when he was complaining yet again about getting ready for preschool, and I asked him why he didn't like school. Eyes blazing with indignation, he turned to me and said forcefully, "They shouldn't teach you what you already know!"

My boy, he likes a challenge.

I know that what I do with him at home doesn't make up for what is not being done for him at school, and yet, I do my best to come up with fun projects and challenging games, and to offer up a little bit of teaching wherever I can. He loves learning new words or working out little puzzles in his head. Back in December, our car trips were all about what my old math books used to call "word problems."

If Santa has eight reindeer who like apples, but he only has five apples, how many more apples does he need to get, so that each reindeer can have one?

Son loved this stuff.

So when a representative from DreamBox Learning contacted me and asked me if I'd like to try out their online math program (geared towards grades K-3), I jumped at the chance. I figured that no matter how good it was (or wasn't), it might provide some interesting distraction for my son. I had no idea what we were in for -- and I mean that in the best possible way.

Trust me, if you have a child somewhere in the range of 4-9 (though it's dependent on math skills more than age), you really want to know about this system.

Here is what I absolutely LOVE about the DreamBox design.

* There is a parent dashboard that tells you not just how much time your child has spent online, but precisely what skills she has been working on. It tell you what her progress is, where she is advancing, and provides you a graphic image of her abilities relative to average curriculum goals for the grade level(s) at which she is working. (She can be, for example, at a first grade level for counting skills and still at a Kindergarten level for addition.) All of this makes it very easy to see what conceptual elements of math your child has or has not grasped.

* The system is astonishingly responsive to a child's current knowledge. Although it's set up like a game, the initial tasks clearly set a baseline to establish what the child already knows. Then, the math tasks he is asked to do set accordingly. Son, for example, can count to 100. The system very quickly figured out that he didn't need to work on counting objects, and it moved on to higher concepts like recognizing how many objects are in a set if you don't have time to count them. (e.g. You know the "five" on dice because of the pattern of the dots, not because you recount them every time.)

In addition, as a child encounters a new skill, the system adjusts. One addition/subtraction game he played was too difficult, and he missed the first three questions, with two tries for each answer. So the game changed to make the challenge easier, while still working on addition/subtraction. For example, it set all the problems to add/subtract for numbers 10 and under (hence, he could use his fingers for help). It also offered him ways to get clues to answers that would begin to help him grasp the concepts without simply doing his work for him.

* There is just enough narrative to the system to keep a child engaged. The "gimmick" is that you have entered an amusement park and have to choose an area in which to play. There is a dinosaur area, a pirate one, a house, and a garden. Each area has eight games available. In the dinosaur area, for example, one game is to free a triceratops that is stuck in the mud. You do this by completing a whole series of math tasks, each set of which garners you one more tool to do the freeing.

The tasks are set against a backdrop of jungle and hungry pythons, flowers you can make bloom with enough correct answers, and other interactive pieces that keep a child engaged. I cannot stress enough that these are nothing like the worksheets we remember from school. They are graphic and interesting, varied and fun.

* You can move back and forth between different kinds of problems -- visual ones, counting ones, ones with numbers, ones with objects -- which seems to me to address different learning styles. And, again, the dynamic system adjusts to a player's skill level.

* There are very clear explanations and directions for the tasks. Potentially unfamiliar words are defined ("'Equal to' means the same as. Which number is equal to the dots you see here?"). Then, if the child misses several problems that are working on that concept, the definition will come up again as a gentle reminder.

* After an initial set-up of about 15 minutes, he was able to play on his own. I watched over his shoulder for more than an hour, fascinated by the game itself, but the directions were so clear that he didn't need my help.

* Games are very long, but the system saves your child's place automatically, so that when she comes back in an hour or three days, all the work she's done up to that point is still recorded. This is really important as Son has played for five hours and is just nearing the end of his first game in his first area, which means that there are potentially 31 other games he could play. That's a LOT of math. But because the games are dynamic and adaptable, I can already see that whatever he chooses for game 2 will pick up where game 1 left off, with him more advanced at some skills and a total beginner at others.

* Parents can actually log on and play the game to see how it works without affecting the child's games. Parents are reminded that it is counter-productive for them to give their children too much help solving the problems in the game, since the system bases the tasks it asks of children on how well they've already done. So if mom answers all the subtraction problems daughter can't, daughter will be given harder ones, rather than easier ones.

This is an intense, thorough, and long curriculum, which would be great if your child needed tutoring help in math, or if you wanted something to supplement a home-schooling plan. The one downside to this tremendous thoroughness is that, five hours in, my son is eager to try a pirate game. He's had enough of dinosaurs for a while. But he can't get into a pirate game until he completes this one. So he's taken a break for a little while.

I have nothing but tremendously positive things to say about DreamBox. It was certainly designed by a fleet of brilliant educators. There are obvious teaching strategies at work, clear goals being tracked, thoughtful sequencing of skills in all the games. On top of that, they have managed to make the games walk precisely the right balance between fun and challenging. Just as it gets frustrating, the game senses the child's uncertainty and adapts (it even notes when the pauses for answers are taking overly long). And there are moments that perfectly hit the kindergarten funnybone: for example, the serpent grows with every answer you get right, stretches his neck towards what he thinks is a flower, only to get a pie in the face. Bwahahahahahah! if you are five. (I don't know if the jokes get more sophisticated as the child moves up in grade level, though I wouldn't put it past DreamBox.)

And do you want to know the best part? I loved DreamBox so much that I asked if I could give some of it away to you, and they obliged with a free one-month subscription to DreamBox for one lucky reader who wants to try it.

DreamBox is really doing things right by offering ALL families a two week free trial. (Plans cost as little as $8.33/month, so it wouldn't break the bank if you got hooked.) Even if you don't win the month here, you and your child can try it out for two weeks to see if you like it. If you are already signed up for the free trial, and you win this giveaway, that will add another month. If you aren't already signed up for the free trial, then you will only get one month free. Still, in a month, your child could get hooked on math. I know my son is loving this.

He told me this is "even better than Noggin's game of the month" -- which is high praise from him. And I love that when he plays it, he is actually learning something.

If you have children the right age for this system, do yourself a favor and check it out. And if you'd like to be entered into the drawing for a free one month subscription, just leave me a comment below -- including a valid email address. Drawing will take place on Monday, March 9, with the winner announced Tuesday morning, the 10th.

Get Your Grove On, Little One

Earlier this winter, the Swingset Mamas sent me a sample of their "Swing, Dance, and Sing" DVD, one Nick Jr. rated in its "best for preschoolers" gift category. I previously mentioned it in my holiday gift guide, but I thought I'd like to give it a more in-depth discussion now that we've watched it multiple times. Two sweet-voiced women with a passel of adorable kids have put together this DVD, which comes with a bonus CD with a sampler of just a few of their songs. The short, colorful videos for each song feature these Mamas in an incredible range of styles -- from zydeco to 60s mod to ballad -- singing about everything under the sun.

Everything that's good for you, that is.

More than just wholesome, this DVD is packed with useful lessons. There are songs about wearing sunscreen and eating your vegetables and reading books and tidying up and many other useful preschool habits. Interspersed among the lessons are sillier songs -- one which is a series of knock-knock jokes, for example.

I appreciated the gentle and widely varying music, the easy-to-understand lyrics, and their attempts to capture children's interest with lots of color, choreographed dance moves for kids to follow, and an overall very upbeat tone.

Frankly, though, I think this DVD is a little boring for adults. The songs are very simple, musically, and the quantity of teaching moments they manage to pack into each 3 minute melody is a little redundant for a grownup who is past the "it's fun to tidy up!" stage. On the other hand, I know I am not the intended audience for this DVD. And it did keep my nearly five and two-and-a-half year olds completely engrossed. Furthermore, compared to the children's bands I've heard that make me want to remove my own ears rather than be forced to continue listening any longer, the Swingset Mamas are a most welcome addition to the repertoire in our car CD changer.

The only complaint I have that is related to the intended viewers of this DVD is that most of the songs have a pace that is a little too slow to really get kids up and moving. Although my children found themselves singing along and waving their arms in imitation of the children on TV, their participation was more passive than I had hoped.

The mamas themselves are energetic and cheerful, and I love that they've included a bunch of singing, dancing, and bopping with kids on the DVD. I will definitely play this again (we've already watched it several times), and I will love it if the conversation we had about the song "Eat the Rainbow," for example, actually helps my kids eat more foods of every color. But I might turn to other more heavy-hitting dance tunes next time I need them to burn off a little steam.

If you are looking for simple, engaging music that isn't saccharine for your preschoolers, I would absolutely recommend the Swingset Mamas.

Circus! Circus!

This has been a crazy busy week, and I find that here I am at Thursday without even mentioning the highlight of my kids' November -- the circus last weekend. I haven't been to the circus since I was a very little girl, and I think I might have been more excited than they were beforehand because I had images in my mind of what I'd been missing all these years. My memories of the circus (apart from the endless hours I spent pretending to be a bare-back rider on our toy spring horse) are of lots of very beautiful women in sparkly costumes adorned with long flowing plumes. I don't know if these women ever really existed at the circus. It would certainly seem that long peacock tails and Las Vegas showgirl plumes don't make a whole lot of sense for a trapeze artists. But those are the women in my mind: spangled costumes with fluffy feathery tails and plumes on their heads, standing on top of cantering horses.

The bare-back rider was, of course, the only act not in the particular iteration of Ringling Brothers' Circus that we saw on Saturday.

But it's hard to argue with the grandeur of a performance that has traveled cross-country with ELEVEN elephants, ten tigers ("three white and seven orange," Son will tell you), half a dozen zebras, lots of horses, two large handfuls of dogs, and countless clowns. The Ringmaster had a voice as velvety as Patrick Stewart. The stilt walkers were enormous and funny. The acrobats amazing.

There was preshow fun -- performers of all kinds working in two small rings, and all of us able to mill around and get up close. We watched clowns walk on giant balls, acrobats do incredible things with giant piles of hula hoops, and an elephant paint a picture. I was thrilled to be so close to the beautiful giants.


Son's verdict? "They're kind of smelly."

One of the most stunning acts in the show was the sway poles. These are about 40 feet tall, and performers at the top of them are quite unafraid to hang upside down, swing towards each other, and generally astonish us with their bravery and agility.


My very favorite was the tiger tamer. Although the tricks he got them to do were pretty cool, for my money, the most impressive thing he did was before the act started. The spotlight was on the tight-rope walkers while the center ring was set up for the tigers. In the darkness, they erected the steel cage (something like a giant circular wall of chain mail) that kept tigers separated from the audience. Then they wheeled out the tigers, in containers that locked to each other to form a long tiger train. Soon, the center ring was filled with ten GIANT tigers -- plump, strong, tigers sitting each on their own stool. One tiger tamer in the middle of the ring, surrounded by ten tigers in the dark. By definition, standing in the middle of the ring, he couldn't see them all at once. But they didn't move a muscle. For a good five minutes, he murmured occasionally, moved slightly towards one tiger or another, and somehow managed to keep them all in order until the lights came up.

Why do I find this so impressive?

I only have two children, and I can't keep them sitting still and quiet for five minutes together EVER. And neither one of them weighs five hundred pounds or has razor sharp claws and teeth.

Son, of course, liked the clowns best. ("And the tigers. And the guys in that giant spinning wheel thing. And the elephants. And the horses. And the funny dogs...")


And as you know, clowning is serious business. Especially when your red nose is a little too big.

May you have some serious family fun yourselves this weekend.

Cross posted from Mommy's Martini.

An Extraordinary Baby Gift

You know how easy it is to find baby gifts for first-time parents. Between the registry, and the adorable clothes in such teensie tiny sizes, and the desire to help in practical ways, there are so many things to buy for baby #1 that it's hard to narrow down the options.

Well, I'm about to make it a little harder -- or a little easier, depending on your perspective.

If you want to stand out from a sea of diaper bags and burp cloths, or you favor gifts of a more crafted and heirloom quality, or you need something to give a mother of a second child, or you have your very own little one who just keeps dashing off in a store, look no further than this great idea:

Bumble Bells.


These beautiful, adjustable, sterling silver baby anklets are hung with little silver bells that tinkle softly when baby wiggles, kicks, or walks. They come in two sizes, for babies and toddlers. They would make a gorgeous and unique gift for a friend.

Or, if your children are anything like mine were as younger toddlers, they would be a very practical gift for yourself. If I'd had Bumble Bells on Daughter the day she ran away from me in Kohl's, I certainly would not have severely sprained my ankle trying to dash after her between the racks. I wouldn't have had to keep her in sight, you see, only within earshot. And I would have caught up to her just the same. Except without the week of being on crutches afterwards.

Those of you who are concerned about safety (aren't we all?) will be glad to know that Bumble Bells are ASTM certified. For you who don't click outbound links, that means that THE international organization that regulates product standards attests to the fact that these bells cannot be removed by a curious child and swallowed. Now that is peace of mind.

The main site for Bumble Bells has more information, photographs, and testimonials from other mothers who have fallen in love with Bumble Bells. You can buy them right now on the Bumble Bells Etsy shop, and in select retail stores, although the small company is expanding and soon will offer more purchase options.

One of the reasons I agreed to review Bumble Bells is that I prefer to support local business whenever I can. Bumble Bells is a Chicago-based company owned by a mother whose own daughter wears Bumble Bells, and as soon as I started talking to her, it became clear that she not only offers a great product but cares about children everywhere. After I'd already agreed to write the review, I asked Jill from Bumble Bells if she would be interested in making a donation to the Literacy Funding Challenge as part of Help Our Schools Saturdays; she responded right away by telling me that a portion of their profits already goes directly to Head Start and that she would be very happy to consider making another education-based donation as well. The goodness and integrity of small businesses in this country never fails to inspire me. All I had to do was explain the project to her, and within a few hours, I had this email response from Jill,

"I have donated! And man does that always feel good."

What a fantastic company to give your business to, if you're in the market for a unique and beautiful baby gift! I only wish I'd known about Bumble Bells before my children were too old for them.

Who Knew Gross Could Be This Much Fun?

Thanks to the generosity that is BusyDad, as well as his good friend, Jeff Day (M.D. and cartoonist extraordinaire*) -- and also thanks in no small part to the wonder that is the Random Number Generator -- the Time household was the lucky recipient of one of the coolest books EV-AH. I have to rave about this book because Son adored it instantly, preferred it over all other bedtime stories, and wanted to have the entire thing read to him in one sitting. Yes, all 112 densely packed pages.

Don't Touch That! The Book of Gross, Poisonous, and Downright Icky Plants and Critters is a fantastic read -- funny, incredibly informative, and endlessly interesting in both pictures and text.**

If you have kids, there's a high likelihood that they are fascinated with the natural world. Darwin might have called them "budding naturalists." I would call them "inveterate ant pokers." Some people might simply call them "boys." I will admit that Daughter is much more inclined to crouch down very very close to the ground, put her face about 4 inches above the ant, and wave gently while repeating over and over, "Hi Ant. Hi Ant. Hi Ant." And Son is more likely to ask hopefully (as he did a few nights ago about a moth that flew out of our pantry and landed on the kitchen floor), "Can I squish it?" Nonetheless, they are both pretty much equally fascinated by bugs, plants, and all manner of critters. I would imagine that Son might embrace a snake more readily than Daughter, but I think it's an age thing and not a gender thing. For the record, both of them were equally enamored of the illustrations in this book. But, the Time family's efforts to thwart gender stereotyping aside, I'll get to the point:

Kids of either sex, unless terrified generally by spiders and plant life, will LOVE this book.

It's got fantastic cartoon illustrations that give you a sense of what these plants and critters look like, as well as light-hearted visions of their most salient traits. The text is much more thorough than I ever would have expected. It gives clear descriptions of habits and habitats, things to worry about and things not to fret over. (How often are spider bites deadly? Can a Venus Flytrap snag your finger? What should you really do if a snake bites you? What are the effects of a snake's venom? Of rubbing up against Poison Ivy? What are the biological mechanisms that create those reactions?) It will give you information about how to deal with the things you shouldn't touch, as well information that will satisfy your intellectual curiosity with all kinds of details you'd never imagine knowing.

And let's face it, if you have kids anything like my kids, you need some kind of reference for what to do when they invariably touch precisely what they aren't supposed to touch. Buy this book, and I swear, you will never go back to staid old reference tomes again.

Son insisted on taking Don't Touch That! with him to preschool a few days after we got it. And then he proceeded to flip to the page about tarantulas and explain to the teacher about how some of them can shoot spiky hairs out of their behinds, which was shortly followed by details of the relationship between the tarantula and the Italian dance, the tarantella. I have to admit, I was impressed at how much he'd retained after just a single reading the night before. I'm sure the great illustrations help in this regard. And so do all the crazy fun facts tucked in and around the useful information. (No, a tarantula bite won't kill you, or even be very harmful. And yes, the tarantella really is a dance named after the tarantula. Read the book to find out why.)

While I personally would have loved to have a little diagram of footprints with arrows to teach me the tarantella (kidding. sort of.) this book far exceeds any reasonable expectations you might have for a book about bugs and plants. And probably many unreasonable ones too.

So here's what I'd do, if I were looking for a present for a child ages 4-8 (and especially feel free to take this as a tip if you're a mother of girls seeking a present for a boy birthday party): I'd buy a copy of this book and then (because it's a bargain at $9.95), I'd pair it with an insect and butterfly net and this super cool bug magnifying jar for endless good times for any budding backyard scientist. In fact, I think I just might be taking my own advice come holiday time for at least one nephew of mine...

So, do yourself and your kids a favor and go check out this book. It's the most fun you'll ever having grossing yourself out.


* Yes, this is the same Jeff Day who is responsible for BusyDad's fantastic new header, as well as his collaborator on the cartoon-straveganza that is BusyDad Tales -- the series of stories written by BusyDad and illustrated by Jeff Day in comics faintly reminiscent of the cartooning style of Bill Watterson's magnificent Calvin and Hobbes.

**Nope, no one has coerced me to write this post, or made writing it a condition of getting the free book, or anything of the sort. I just had to pass on this great recommendation, since the book is such a hit at our house, and I'm so grateful to have won a book that will clearly lead to many good times of exploration in the future.

Originally posted at Mommy's Martini.