My nine year-old daughter has written a review of the new Buddy Talk, a new conversation starter toy from www.aroundthetablegames.com. She likes books like
Coke Vs. Pepsi , a book that asks people to make choices between two things to get them to talk about what kind of person they are. What seems like silly, surface level questions to an adult, are intriguing to kids. Whether you drink Pepsi or Coke has obviously no real value to understanding who we really are. We adults are smarter, focusing instead on what vodka we drink, car we drive, or shoes we wear.

Buddy Talk, though, looks at loftier things, like kids’ hopes, fears and dreams.

Around the Table Games has other variations on this theme for families and kids needing new topics to talk from.   

Her (very short) review:

Buddy Talk is fun to play by yourself or with your friends. If you take buddy talk to a restaurant it’s great to entertain you or your friends. It’s also great to start a conversation. It has a cool clip so it can hang from your backpack.

There are planes – and then there are private jets.

There are cars – and then there are Bentleys.

There are houses – and then there are mansions.

There are strollers…

And then there is
Mutsy!

Super chic, super sleek, and oh-so-indulgent, never before has there been such a posh stroller!

European design is just one of the fantastic things about this wonderful stroller. Your little one will be the center of attention in this one-of-a-kind experience. Now, if I sound over excited, I am – simply put, The Mutsy Urban Next is just too cute for words and definitely a conversation starter!

Pros:

• Amazingly smooth ride – large, easy-swivel tires make any terrain a snap (the stroller comes with a second set of smaller wheels, but I prefer to leave on the bigger ones)
• Stands upright when folded – easy to maneuver folding means less time fussing with folding and more time with baby!
• Wheels easily remove – with one-handed removal, this feature makes Mutsy all the better for quick storage
• The Mutsy Sitter turns your seat into a wonderful, detached seat for your little boy or girl.
• Soft, Graspable Leather Handle
• Lots of accessories, including bassinette, hard-shell backpack, Eskimo muff (which is just too cute and warming!), rain cover and many more.

Cons:

• It seems larger than other strollers – tight turns or small grocery store aisles may pose a problem
• It can appear weighty for some – at around 25 lbs for the stroller alone, it can be considered by some heavy duty.

If you’re in the market for a stroller and you like that modern European stroller look, then Mutsy is the stroller of your dreams. Combining functionality and charm, it will never fail to impress and charm onlookers.

To purchase, please visit www.goores.com

Great Dad Readers, receive 10% off of your order by using code “gdmu” at checkout

Definitely Maybe (Universal Studios)

I have a major problem with the PG warning. It provides so little guidance for parents as to what actually is in a movie. I will let my 8 year-old daughter watch many PG-rated movies, especially if we’re on a plane or even if the theme looks romantic but somewhat adult. At this age, she pretty much ignores what she doesn’t understand, though that is changing very quickly. There is so little time these days, that often, as parents, you end up watching a movie with your child rather than pre-screening it to make sure it’s right. I’m not saying this is the optimum strategy, but sometimes it just happens. Last night, I got a major dose of why you always need to screen a movie, check our ratings, or go to CommonsenseMedia.org to get the complete scoop on a movie.

Definitely, Maybe is definitely a movie on which I should have done more research. While the plot idea seems like it would be cute: early middle-age man tells ten year old daughter how he met her mother and fell in love, their conversations are way too frank both for the main child character and for a little girl my daughter’s age. Within literally five minutes of the start of the film, the dad picks up his daughter at the first day of sex education at her school. Immediately, dialogue refers to “putting a penis in a vagina.” My daughter knows what these words mean, but I don’t think she’s yet heard them in this context, and I certainly didn’t want her to hear about them in this movie. We skipped ahead to the next scene, but it just went downhill from there. The movie was over in fifteen minutes.

Other difficult content includes more sex talk, reference to a threesome, lesbian affairs, and some in-bed kissing though no nudity. It’s just not good content for little kids, though nothing wilder than most teenagers have been exposed to on regular television.

All in all, a seemingly cute film for my wife and I to watch later, but not recommended for kids under about twelve.

I just got done reading my four year old’s favorite book, Uncover a Shark by (David George Gordon. He LOVES this book, and while the cover says it’s for eight years old plus, he has memorized all the facts about the shark and was explaining to me features of the shark’s anatomy. This series is part book and part model, which he find really intriguing. So much so, that I felt like I was talking to a kid who would one day grow up to be a zoologist or other scientist.

The book has all of sixteen pages, but each page also has a three-dimensional plastic part of the shark’s anatomy. The text is about the organ (liver, brain) or body part featured (teeth, skin). Peppered throughout are fun “did-you-know?” style trivia about the shark. I’m not much into sharks, but enjoyed reading the book with him and sticking my hand into the sharks belly, and feeling its teeth and vertebrae.

The series includes other books in the style include Uncover the Human Body , Frog, Cobra, Crocodile, Tiger, and Uncover a Dog all of which I’ll look at for his next birthday.

Our computer DVD has been having problems and little by little we lost the ability to run any kids games that need a DVD to run. Now that it’s fixed, the kids are re-discovering their old friends,
I Spy Mystery and I Spy Fantasy from Scholastic. Both of these games keep them spellbound literally for hours. And, like a good crossword puzzle, they can jump back into them at any point without losing interest. And like a crossword, they can ask for help (and they do!) all the time, and it’s easy, and fun, for adults to peak in and join them in their quest for objects and words hidden in fantasy landscapes and setttings.

If you enjoy the I Spy books, you’ll also enjoy these fantasy games. The illustrations, mini-toys, and riddles, while simple enough for a small child, can even keep an adult interested and involved. My kids, at just four and just eight, enjoy these games and play together finding things. My young son needs some help reading the clues, but even this is made easy by the software that re-reads the direction with a simple scroll-over. These games are good at teaching basic computer skills, but also problem–solving, cause and effect, reading, following directions, and logic. I’d recommend these as a great gift for young kids, or as a diversion for kids during long trips. Since the illustrations are chock-full of tiny images, the software alters the game each time making each playing a new discovery.

$19.99 and less (some even at $6 at Amazon) and most run on both Mac and Windows.

IIf your mom told you never to pay retail, buying a Nintendo Wii even at the manufactured suggested retail price may seem like a violation of mom’s warning. You just can’t find one on-line or in stores without superhuman efforts (tipping the manager, waiting outside the store before opening hours on days when shipments are expected, or paying a $60+ premium on eBay or Amazon). Here’s another option that worked for me though it took a while. Warning: this idea is not for those in need of a quick Wii fix for a birthday or upcoming holiday. It is purely for those who can’t spend the extra cash, or who want to brag to their friends that for once, they “paid retail” and that was the best deal you could get.

Do this: Sign up for the “now in stock” Google group at NowInStockWiis | Google Groups . This Google group only exists to alert members that some online retailer has an inventory of Wii consoles at “regular” prices and if you hurry, you might be able to get one. When you sign up, make sure to go to “edit my membership” and make sure to set your email delivery option to: Send each message as it arrives. You do this so you get an email as soon as there is a new Wii sighting. You need to click and try to buy as soon as you get the email. The inventory flies fast, perhaps much to the 3000 NowinstockWiis members.

Alerts come at all times of the day, though I found that there are more postings in the early morning hours East Coast time, much to the disadvantage of Westerners. I clicked and clicked for about a month and half, but finally scored a Wii console from BestBuy.com for $249, not a penny over retail.

One added note: along with the $249 single console offer, there are a lot of offers for package deals, costing upwards of $600. These are around all over anyway, so usually you can just skip over them when you see the elevated price in the description.

Happy hunting. I am no longer a member of the NowinstockWiis Google group, but I remember my days there fondly.

Like most people, I have a dirty little secret: I collect tacky souvenirs from monuments and buildings when I travel.

Like collections of snow globes, one monument alone is a tasteless souvenir. But put together a FULL CITY of monuments and you make a statement. My wife could never understand this mania, or “neurosis,” as she puts it, until a few years ago when the San Francisco International Airport featured a full concourse exhibit of souvenir monuments from around the world. There, in plenty of glory, were miniature reproductions of every major edifice in the world. Suddenly, my puny collection gained stature and value, rather then just being the goofy past-time of a middle-aged traveler. Some day, I could bequeath my collection to the Museum of Modern Art or even the Met!

As a former New Yorker, when I saw these, I knew I had to have them. The cars are cute too, but I’d skip them for a PanAm building, miniature Whitney, or a Columbus Circle. In fact, I’m getting two sets. I’m getting one set for my little boy to place between tracks of his train set (yes, the scale is a bit off), and one to go up on the shelf until I get a call from the mus

eum asking to take my collection on tour. They will make a perfect addition to my collection of stone, plaster, bronze and wood miniatures from cities I’ve visited around the world.

To read more about the history of this crazy hobby, check out this book: Souvenir Buildings Miniature Monuments: From the Collection of Ace Architects, which is a good book for dads and kids. My four-year-old son loves looking at the monuments. The book is divided mostly into major city-scapes, composed of mostly bronze and iron replicas of local landmarks and buildings. This is a fun book for both dads, kids, and budding architects.

The subtitle of the book is “Building a Closer Connection with Your Baby,” and that’s what we hope the book will help dads do: feel closer and more connected to the little people in their lives. If you’re interested, you can read the preface here: My dad used to sit on the bathroom counter while he shaved and brushed his teeth, finished dressing, and tied his tie. I did the same with my toddler. It would be before dawn and very quiet, and I would set our daughter on the side of the sink while I shaved, talking quietly to her. Something about being alone together, trying made it exciting and special for her. It didn’t matter that I was busily getting ready; she was glad to come along, and even the sense of purpose was fun for her, just as she still likes to come on the most boring and mundane errands—to the post office, the DMV, even the dentist. When my daughter accompanies me, she doesn’t act bored and impatient. The outing becomes more like an occasion, and I enjoy it more too.

One day, at the sink, she insisted on shaving me. She was just three. If not for the fact that I remember sitting on the sink to watch my dad shave, I wouldn’t even have considered putting a razor into my toddler’s hand and letting her at my throat. I showed her the motion (down, pick up, down—never sideways!—and don’t press hard) and guided her hand through it a couple times. I told her how my grandfather, each morning before he went to elementary school, had gone upstairs to his own grandfather’s room with a straight razor, soap, and brush, to shave him after he had gone blind in his old age. She looked totally absorbed by this, and held her hand steady, so I positioned her hand at the top of my cheek and let her try a stroke. She carefully removed a stripe of shaving cream from my cheek, without trimming a single whisker. We worked on the pressure a bit, and she did most of the flat, easy parts of my cheeks.

My daughter was very proud to have been allowed this responsibility, and to have done something to care for me the way I normally took care of her. It was a bonding moment, which she has asked to repeat every few months since, and which I’ve carried on with her two younger siblings as they reached that age—without a single scratch.

Most men are like I was before my first child, having never even held a baby in our lives and with little or no experience taking care of kids. Of course we feel apprehensive about bonding and unsure how to interact with our offspring. I knew, though, that if I let my apprehension put me in the back seat in parenting, I would be taking a step back from one of the most important experiences of my life. I needed to take the initiative and create my own ways to bond with my child, right from the beginning.

It’s hard to engage after work when you’re tired and stressed, and part of the choice facing fathers is whether to play it safe, stay in that work mode and be very hands-off at home, or to engage with our children, something for which we’ve had no practice, and makes us feel unsure of ourselves.

Bonding with a baby or small child is about the small moments that you spend together, looking at each other, talking, taking walks. It’s not something that happens instantly. It’s a relationship that grows over time. That’s what this book is about: practical, everyday things to do to enjoy being with your children and forge the bond for both of you.

A lot of dads feel closer to older children, the ones who can catch a ball and enjoy a slice of pizza. But the bonding process starts in infancy, in hundreds of small ways. That’s where we’ll start—we’ll get to ball and pizza later.

We at GreatDad are obviously strong believers that moms and dads have different parenting styles. Both are important and play different roles in the emotional, moral, and intellectual development of the child. While we also believe that children thrive on love, positive parenting, and supportive environments, we can’t help but be more and more persuaded of how much is “hard-wired” in each individual.

We had an opportunity to talk with Michael Gurian about these subjects and his new book, Nurture the Nature. His thoughts are especially interesting to us since they underscore the crucial role dads play in the development of the child.

Are moms and dads interchangeable as parents?

Moms and dads create different types of bonds with their children — you can’t measure the father bond through the lens of the mommy bond. While the mommy/infant bond is primary during the first two years of life, dads must bond with babies during the first five years to develop the trust, reliance and respect for their fathers that will become even more important to their development as they reach pre-adolescence. Additionally, dads that bond with their babies during this time are far more likely to stay with them through separation or divorce.

To read more, go to GreatDad.com for the other parts of this article:

What critical elements do dads bring to parenting?

When are the most critical times for dad to spend time with children?

Who gets credit or blame for the successes or problems we see in our kids?

How about the child who plays video games and doesn’t engage in the world?

Take a look at the cool video on the Amazon site for these battling Air Hogs R/C AH-64 Apache Havoc Heli Indoor Infrared Micro Helicopters. They come two to set for $69.99, which is about $10 bucks off two bought separately. The cool thing though is that the pair comes equipped with laser sensors, so you can actually “shoot” the other helicopter down (actually, it just gives it a momentary tailspin). The real live video game quality of flying infrared controlled helicopters can’t be beat, and this added dimension made this toy a Time Magazine toy of the year for 2007.

In my experience, these helicopters take a lot of work to get flying properly; work that probably involves losing a tail rotor or top rotor (or several), so buy extra or you’ll have six minutes of fun, interrupted by ten days of waiting for spare parts. Because they are not super easy to fly, and each collision risks breaking the fragile rotors, I have never even shown this helicopter to my four and eight-year-olds. They would not be able to watch patiently while I fly it, and it would just end with one of us crying, probably me. I fly mine only in the bedroom, where I can control most crashes into the bed. This video shows amazing control though, so maybe they’ve improved controls.