Buy This!

Reading Greg @ Daddy Types’ recent experience with TV commercials here, I was reminded of my own daughter’s thoughts on commercials…

Usually, we hear, “Daddy, can you skip the commercials?” — which works great on the DVR. When we tell her we can’t because it is “live TV”, I think she gets confused. One day, she’ll tell her grandkids about how she occasionally had to sit through the commercials.

On the occasion where she is forced to watch commercials (either because of “live TV”, or us just not bothering to fast-forward through), she would occasionally tell us that a commercial was “important”. Eventually, I discovered this meant “non-toy” or “boring”.

Either that, or Oxy Clean really is that important…

Where am I?

Man, this guy hasn’t posted anything here in a while.

Where is he?

Oh, wait, that guy is me.

Sorry, all, but things have been really busy this summer, and I plan to post about some of it.

In the meantime, here’s a little quote which makes me rethink the impact commercials have on kids.

Ms. Kaz (brushing teeth)
Daughter: Mommy, it’s a good thing you use a Reach toothbrush.
Ms. Kaz: Really? Why?
Daughter: It cleans better.
Ms. Kaz: Does it?
Daughter: Yeah, it reached places and ordinary toothbrush can’t reach.
Ms. Kaz: …
Daughter: …
Ms. Kaz: Where did you learn that?
Daughter: Onna commercial.
Ms. Kaz: How did you know we had a Reach toothbrush?
Daughter: I recognized the letters.

I think she’s lost TV for a quite a while. Me? I’m gonna start showing her commercials for sports cars, so she can help me convince Ms. Kaz we need one!

A trip to the Movie Store

When I go walking with my daughter, we often go to our local, independent “Movie Store,” as she calls it. It is only a few blocks away, and she likes looking at the kids movies. And we both like looking at the “treats” they sell there (this weekend’s haul – Swedish Fish).

We usually wind up looking at, and often renting, a Princess Movie. Lately, however, she’s been into Scooby-Doo (or Scooby-dooby-doo, as she calls him). Still, it surprised me (although pleasantly, I must say) when she chose a Scooby-Doo movie (“Pirates Ahoy!“) over a Princess Stories DVD.

“Really?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” she replied, “Timmy likes Scooby-Doo, and I like everything Timmy likes.”

Later, at dinner, I tried to get the truth our of her, “So which do you like better? Scooby-Doo or Princesses?” At first, she replied as she usually does, “Scooby-Doo and Princesses!” Then, thinking about it, she confessed, “No, Princesses.”

Continuing the game, I threw out the age-old, fully not expecting her to get it, “Ginger or Mary-Ann?”

“Ginger and Mary-Ann!” she told me. “Oh, daddy,” Ms. Kaz said, “she doesn’t know who they are!”

“No, no, wait,” I said, “I think she might be onto something. I like that answer. Ginger and Mary-Ann.” Ms. Kaz rolled her eyes.

Miley-saurus

My daughter has a blonde wig (to go with the pink and green ones her Aunt gave her) that she likes to wear and say she is Hannah Montana. We don’t watch Hannah Montana at home, so I don’t know where she gets it.

Oh, wait, maybe I do.

Anyhow, it was hi-larious when I put the wig on her nice, wooden rocking horse and called it something like “Horse-y Montana” (hey, you don’t have to have your “A” material for 3 1/2 year olds).

We were talking about this at bedtime last night. My daughter said something about the cat being, “smi… smile… smiley…”

“Miley Cyrus?” I suggested.

“Yeah!” my daughter exclaimed, “Miley-saurus!”

I guess when my daughter is my age, Miley will be a dinosaur. But that’s okay, because by then, Miley’s kid’ll be raking in the dough…

Oh lord, it has started…

I recorded Cinderella III off the Disney Channel a little while back because my daughter is a Cinderella nut and I actually heard this wasn’t half bad.

My daughter has, in the past, always asked us to skip the commercials (that goodness for DVRs)*, but I started to notice that she asked us less and less frequently to “skip the commercials”. She had discovered that the commercials during this movie were for some, in her eyes, really cool stuff.

Great.

One day, as Ms. Kaz was fixing the baby a bottle in the kitchen and my daughter was watching Cinderella III, my daughter came in and told her that she wanted a Hannah Montana beach house toy.**

“You don’t even know who Hannah Montana is!” Ms. Kaz told her.

My daughter’s answer? “Sure I do! She rocks the beach!”

* What a world our kids live in. My daughter even asks us during live shows to “skip the commercials.”
** Also available – a doll of her best friend, Miley. There’s just something weird about that.

A variety of things

Lots of stuff going on, but little time to talk about them…

• We gotta move this boy out of our room. He’s in a bassinet now, and half the night he shuffles and grunts and we just gotta get him out of here. That being said, we’ve gone with the cadillac of monitors – the Philips SCD 590. Pricey, yes, but it is very feature-laden, and Thingamababy gave it a great review. This is a newer model – sacrificing temperature readout for a second receiver.  I look forward to reviewing it here… in a few days.
• We went with the Eco-friendly birth announcements at FineMoments. Again, a bit pricey, but they seem really nice. We’ll let you know how we like ‘em.
• Toys-R-Us has announced a recall of their Elite Operations toys due to an unsafe lead content. No injuries have been reported, but they recommend you remove the toys from your home and return them to your local Toys-R-Us for a refund. Toys-R-Us recalled their army guys — doesn’t seem to be that difficult, now, does it?
•  The WeeGo Bottles availability date is now “early November” … and it appears they are one step closer to their on-line store.
• Speaking of which, the Tyler Morning Telegraph (TX) quoted me in their on-line edition here, in an article titled “Are Plastics Hazardous for Babies?” They didn’t ask, but I don’t mind (although a link to the blog would have been nice!). My section is followed up by a quote from a Dr. Cherry mentioning choosing between the risk of chemicals and the risk of cuts from glass bottles. Ms. Kaz and I made a conscious decision not to give our son broken glass bottles to play with… Seriously, though, we don’t have this concern now because (a) he’s too young to hold the bottle, and thus throw the bottle, himself, and (b) we have hardwood floors, which I am sure would cushion a falling bottle enough to at least avoid breakage.

Sorry about another “quickies” post. I hope to have something more substantial soon!

Planet Saturday

A lot of people email me, asking me to look at this, review that, advertise such-and-such (okay, not a lot of advertising offers, but if you’re out there and have deep pockets, the email address is there to the right).

A while back, I received an email about a site called Planet Saturday. This site is part comic strip, part, well, part blog, only with one entry a month. It is run by a dad who is very involved in raising his daughter (or so his business parter, Kelli, tells me).

I checked it out back then, put it on the back-burner until I was in need of something to post.

Well, here’s a post about it…

The drawings are gorgeous. The strip is a very interesting, sometimes fun look into the author’s life. Many of the strips revolve around his daughter. Some are about when he was a kid. Often, the two intersect.

I wouldn’t say all the strips are laugh-out-loud funny strips. I don’t know if they are all meant to be. But, as a father of a girl myself, sometimes I can nod my head and relate.

I think the link is something worth passing on. I know some of you may not like the strip. Others will. But I thought I’d share.

Us fathers stick together.

Something going on this Friday??

So, apparently, there is some book coming out this Friday. Hairy Porter? Harry Petter? Something like that. I guess they expect a lot of copies to be sold..?

That’s right, it is the riveting final installment of Harry Potter’s Magnificent Adventures in the School for Wizardly Wonder (a.k.a. Deathly Hallows).

And, hey, all you Green Parents should be happy — it is being called the Greenest Book Ever. And just look at all the trees and resources they are saving! Scholastic’s US printings are creating this savings by printing on paper which is 65% certified ancient forest friendly. Err…

And we find out Harry Potter is dead! Dead wrong about just how green this book really is.

Is this really a case of The-More-You-Spend, The-More-You-Save? The resource savings is likely driven to such high numbers due to the sheer volume of books produced. But could you not also say that because of this volume, this book has the potential to also be the least eco-friendly book ever..? As TreeHugger points out, this book could also use more trees than any other book published this year.

(Read more @ EcoGeek, via Treehugger.com)

Maybe I am being a little too hard on them – I mean, Scholastic could be doing a lot worse. I am always happy to see company’s taking steps (every little bit helps, right?). But they could also have used 100% recycled paper, as per Ms. Rowling’s request(those of you in Canada are getting a much greener version of this book).
Still, your best bet is to get it from the library, or borrow it from a friend when they are finished reading (you may have to wait until Saturday morning to borrow one). If only there was an electronic version available. If only. Ahem.

Oh, yeah, apparently these books encourage kids to read and turns their souls over to Satan.

Home Depot

I can’t blame Disney, so I gotta blame Home Depot on this one…

Me: You’re going to have a purple room, right sweetie?
Daughter: Purple with.. with.. Tinkerbell!

You see, when we went to Home Depot to look at paint chips to pick a color for her new Big Girl Room, the first thing she noticed was the Disney paints display. And, of course, they have little brochures (for lack of better term) with sample rooms which are waaaaay too Disneyfied.

And my daughter saw the Tinkerbell themed one. It was purple. And she wanted her room to look exactly like that.

I had thought she had forgotten the whole Tinkerbell thing and just wanted a purple room.

Now, after the above exchange, I realized she’s had it in her head the whole time.

I don’t know how she’ll react to a purple room which isn’t filled with Tinkerbell stuff.

UPDATE: Okay, I looked, and the sample Tinkerbell room is not purple at all. I have no idea where my daughter is getting this association from. But then again, she’s three, so who knows how her mind works!

Designs on a new nursery

Holy cow, the House & Garden website has some sweet kids’ room designs here. Of course, I have no single room large enough to accomplish anything shown there, but it sure is sweet to look at. I just gotta make sure my daughter doesn’t seem them, or she’ll want them.

Of course, the really nice thing about this section is the inclusion of eco-kid products, and an all too short Q&A with Amanda Moore, an “eco-conscious nursery expert” about creating a green nursery. Ms. Kaz taped a similar program from HGTV the other day (I’ll have to get the name of it), which, again, was way too short. But there are plenty of resources out there.

It is nice to see these topics hitting a little more mainstream media sources.

There’s a lot of other nice stuff in this Design For Kids section, so check it out (thanks to Daddytypes!).

What I am not writing about…

Well, okay, I haven’t really been writing about anything the last few days, but…

… I am not going to write about the parents who starved their baby (google it, you should be able to find it). You know, the parents who happened to be first and foremost, stupid, and secondly, vegan.

I don’t think it is because I am being defensive because I am vegetarian. Personally, I think eating a balanced diet as a vegan is too much work. And I like pizza too much. But, contrary to what many people have been commenting, it is possible to eat well as a vegan.

Does that include being vegan and pregnant? Or raising a vegan baby? I don’t know. But I would guess there probably is a way to do it right. Again, it takes a lot of work.

But let’s remember, this baby died because the parents were not cautious enough. Not because they were vegans. Anyhow, I am probably just inviting more misinformation to be spread in my comments section.

And I probably should provide helpful links for vegans, but, well, this more of a “get it off my chest” kind of post, and hopefully I can dig up some links if I get less annoyed. Or maybe if I get more annoyed.

*sigh* I’d much rather be thinking about strollers, people…

CFL (Quick) Update

I’ve encouraged others to give compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFL) a try, so I feel it only fair to post this information…

If you happen to break one of your bulbs, which do contain very minute traces of mercury, do not panic. TreeHugger tells us (a) why not to panic, and (b) how to clean up this mess.

What you probably don’t want to do is call Home Depot or listen to Fox News (good advice in general), as this woman did. She also now apparently refuses to believe that perhaps her local DEP made a mistake and is now correcting it. Stay the course!

Anyhow, I know if I ever break one of these, I will freak out, because that’s the way I am. If you do – try not to worry too much, and follow the steps outlined in the (first) link above.

And, if you don’t break one, but want to dispose of it, remember to return it where you bought it, or your local IKEA, or your local hazardous waste facility.