Happy New Year

Sledding

Jumping Monkeys Episode 28: Brian Niles of PTA Tech Corner

On our last episode of the year we talk with Dad Geek Brian Niles of PTA Tech Corner. Niles created a Web site to help out the other parents in the PTA and it grew from there. Tune in to hear Brian's excellent tech advice for parents of teenagers.

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SPEND: Baby Rock Apparel

SAVE: Price Protectr

GIVE: Child's Play - recommended by Ryan Kohler

BOOK PICK: A Short History of Nearly Everything

OTHER LINKS: City Creator - recommended by Christine

Secrets are Cameras

Milo: Mommy, we got you a present.

Marco: Milo, that's a secret. Remember how you told me you were going to be a big boy and keep our secret?

Milo: It's a camera!

Marco: It's supposed to be a secret, Milo. Do you know what a secret is?

Milo: Secrets are cameras.

Pining for Klickitat Street

Annabella has been obsessed with Beverly Cleary's books for several months now. It started with Henry Huggins and now we're working through the Beezus and Ramona books and the Ralph Mouse books.

I love these books.

I love them because I read them as a child and it's wonderful to be reading them to Annabella. Some of the books we've read are my own copies that my parents saved. I watch as Annabella traces her finger over where I scrawled my name and address thirty years ago.

It's easy to say that these books are timeless. How else would they still be so popular after some of them have been in print for over 50 years? But I also love them for how dated they are. What book for young readers today would feature this scene between a father and his young daughter:

"Mr. Quimby blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. 'I expect to be one of those old men with a long gray beard who has his picture in the paper on his hundredth birthday and who tells reporters he owes his long life to cigarettes and whiskey.'" - Ramona and Her Father (1977)

What's even more amusing is how the childhoods of the kids on Klickitat street span decades. The books were written over many years, but the kids age only a year per book. Most of the Henry Huggins books were written in the fifties and it shows. The kids roam the neighborhood with almost no parental supervision and their lives seem relatively simple compared to the Ramona books where fathers lose jobs and mothers are forced to become "liberated" and go back to work.

Even the early Ramona books seem strange to our modern parenting sensibilities. In Ramona the Pest (1968) Ramona is in kindergarten and her mother leaves her at home in the morning to walk to school by herself. In kindergarten! Skip ahead a few books to Ramona Forever (1984) and her parents struggle with the decision to leave Ramona and her teenage sister alone together after school.

Parenting styles change fast. I look at the things on my pregnant friends' baby registries and find myself spouting off like an old lady. "Back in my day there was no such thing as breast pumps that fit in backpacks or organic baby clothes!" And every parent I know wishes their own kids could have childhoods like they did, without the Internet or Bratz Dolls or DVRs or whatever evil (necessary or not) that is unique to the new millennium.

I know there's the temptation to lament about the good old days when things were simpler, especially when it comes to parenting. The truth is that every generation of parents had their MySpace problem. Perhaps Beverly Cleary herself said it best. In an interview on NPR on the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2006 Cleary was asked if Ramona changed over the decades. "I don't think children themselves have changed that much," she said. "It's the world that's changed."

Review: HP Printer and Photo Book

As I mentioned last week, the Parent Bloggers Network recently sent me an HP Photosmart 626 Printer and two cloth bound photo books to review. Here are my thoughts.

Printer Setup

The printer was super easy to set up. It's designed to work directly with your memory card. Just pop it in and then edit or print your photos. If you want to print photos from your computer, you must purchase a USB cable separately.

For a printer that's designed to help you create a photo memory book, I didn't find this very practical. If you're making a photo book of your most recent vacation I can see how all of your pictures could still be on your memory card. But if you're making a photo book of your children's first year of life (as I was) and that child is now 4.5 years old, you're going to need the USB cable to get those photos off of your computer.

I can see how working directly from the memory card would be really helpful for a technophobe since you don't have to worry about compatability issues. Personally, I want my printer to come with a USB cable.

Printer Touch Screen Functionality

The PhotoSmart 626 works with a touch screen that pops up out of the computer. You can navigate your photos using the included stylus or your finger. I found both work equally well. The touch screen makes it simple to crop photos, remove red-eye, and adjust photo brightness. I found the results to be similar to the basic photo editing software that's included with most printers.

If your camera records video, you can even use the touch screen to play the video, although without sound.

My one gripe with the touch screen is that I'd prefer to view the pictures on the large screen of my computer to determine how they're going to look before I print them.

Printing

The prints from this printer are similar in quality to my Canon i560 and my Dell Photo AIO 922 printer. The major improvement is how easy it is to print borderless photos of different sizes. However, you also can't print any photos larger than 5x7.

The HP printer also includes a very cool feature called Get Creative. Use it to draw on photos with stylus, add frames, special effects, clip art, and captions. This is a great feature for anyone who fancies him/herself a scrapbooker and will come in handy when I finally get around to creating those photo books.

Troubleshooting

As I tested this printer I never found cause to refer to the troubleshooting and support section of the user's guide, but I read it anyway and found it to be very simple to understand, which can't be said about many tech products these days.

Discounts

The Parent Bloggers network asked me to mention that you should check Sunday circulars for specials on the printer itself. For 20% off the Photo Books at the HP Home & Office Store, use COUPON CODE: AC8595.

Jumping Monkeys Episode 27: Mommy Track'd

On this week's episode we sit down with Amy Keroes, founder and President of Mommy Track'd.

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Congrats to David Stolp, Ben Betts, and Joshua Miller. We randomly drew their names from the pile of correct answers of the Classic Toy Sounds contest. David , Ben, and Joshua all won a copy of Peanut Butter PC.

Here are the answers to the contest:

#1: Slinky
#2: SIMON
#3: ViewMaster
#4: Operation (the game)
#5: Etch-A-Sketch
#6: Rock'em-Sock'em-Robots

SPEND: The Guitar Hero III on Ebay: A Modern Holiday Tale

SAVE: Lookybook
Recommended by Ed

GIVE: Free Rice

AUDIBLE PICK:

The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

OTHER LINKS:

Why Pregnant Women Don't Tip Over

Shortage of Helium No Laughing Matter

First Impressions: HP Photo Printer and Photo Book

I recently received the HP Photosmart 626 printer and two cloth-bound photo books to review for the Parent Bloggers Network. I'll post my full review next week and will be discussing these products with Leo on an upcoming podcast, but I wanted to fill you in on my first impressions.

The pros:

• I love the compact size since my desk is already so crowded. Plus, it's totally portable.
• The books themselves look to be of a similar quality to the linen books from Shutterfly, which I've been quite happy with.
• If your memory card is in the printer and you aren't using it, it will play a little slideshow of your photos.

The cons:

• The printer doesn't come with a USB cable, which means any picture you want to use for a book has to be on your memory card.
• The print quality is good enough for the price, but not fantastic.

Stay tuned for my full review. If you've used this printer, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments section. 

Loving Lookybook

Every once in a while someone sends me something that simply can't wait until the next episode of Jumping Monkeys. Especially since we won't have an episode this Saturday because the holidays are kicking my butt.

So, thanks to Ed for sending me a link to Lookybook, where you can browse through picture books to see what they really look like. Yes, you can do this in the bookstore or the library too, but if your kids are anything like mine in the bookstore, "browsing" is not something they leave you a lot of time for.

You can also embed the books on your blog. Here are a few of my recommendations from our bookshelf. But, don't take my word for it.

Jumping Monkeys Episode 26: Becky Worley

This week we chat with our old friend Becky Worley as she enters her last weeks of pregnancy with twins. Becky is currently a tech contributor to Good Morning America and a reviewer for Yahoo. We ask her about gadgets she thinks she'll need and when her kids will start playing rugby.

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The Correct Answers to our Peanut Butter PC Contest:

Snow White (Queen)
Mulan (Mushu the dragon ghost)
The Little Mermaid (Ursula the "octopian" witch)
Peter Pan (Cpt. Hook the pirate)
The Lion King (Timon the meerkat)
Aladdin (Iago the parrot)

You still have a chance to enter to win a copy of the Peanut Butter PC. Listen to the podcast to hear the Classic Toy Sounds and then e-mail Megan@Twit.TV with your answer to win. There are 6 sounds.

SPEND: Questions for Kids by Michael Smith

SAVE: Motion-Sensing Lights (Found on Parent Hacks)

GIVE: Robert's Snow Cure for Cancer

BOOK PICK: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE WEEK:

Nursury Rhymes and More from Mike Chambers.

OTHER LINKS:

• SafeMama
• NYT: For Toddlers Toy of Choice is Tech Gadget
• TIME: Fatherhood 2.0
• NEWSWEEK: Don't Just Call Me Mr. Mom

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