So, we’re big fans already of Upromise. It seems like I’d rather obsess about using particular vendors than explicitly save. But that’s a different issue.

As I was looking through their online catalog for where to buy gifts this holiday season, I saw their gift certificate section. We don’t normally give gift certificates, but after I saw that Old Navy was on there, I though maybe I should buy a gift card for myself.

We buy a lot of our kid’s clothes at Old Navy. They’re cute and cost effective. He also likes shopping there because they have big super bouncy balls for only a quarter. We’ll buy him one, and he’ll chase it through the store. It suits all our needs pretty much. So I know we’ll be spending money there.

The epiphany came this morning when I thought - why not spend money off a gift certificate? Upromise will put 3% of the gift card purchase into his college fund. We’ll use the gift card ourselves, because over the next few years, he’ll be going through clothes at a good rate. It is just another win to shopping at Old Navy.

They have a lot of stores signed up for their gift cards and the % savings varies from merchant to merchant. You can check out their list here. Nordstrom’s, Home Depot and Panera are other places we might be getting ourselves gift cards for.

If only they had gas station cards. Or Visa/Mastercard cards.  I’ll keep my eye out for them though.

Tags: parenting, upromise, gift certificates, saving for college

These Stacrobats are probably my favorite toy. And not just because I picked it out. But it’s got the most growth appeal I think.

It is a collection of little acrobats, with magnets in their chest and hands and feet. So they “stick” to each other in a variety of ways. There are balls that have magnets in them too. And the base of their carrying case is also metal, so that they’ll attach themselves to the circus ring floor too.

We’ve had it for a year or so now. He’s gone from not understanding the guys at all, to pulling a chain of them apart (and when he got down to the last acrobat, he tried to pull its limbs off - cute in a savage sort of way). We’re starting to put them together as the other one takes them apart. The fact that they kind of reach out and grab each other makes this an easy game to play.

I’m looking forward to the day where he starts figuring out how the various magnets react (some attract and some repulse) and how to create the strongest formations of acrobats. Then he’ll tell stories of the acrobats and put on little shows.

But for now, we’re really content with him just being amazed at how they can stick to each other on opposite sides of his tent.

Tags: parenting, stacrobats review

We’ve heard a lot of good things about Cariboo from mother’s groups. And we’ve given it as a gift to another family, who said they really enjoyed it. The minimum age they recommend is 3 - so we figured we had some time to wait.

But patience is not our strong point.

To be fair, the balls in the game are a choking hazard, as our boy has already tried swallowing one. So you gotta keep your eye on the little ones while playing the game. Really. Keep an eye on them.

But, if you can do that, then there is a fun little game to be played.

In “beginner” mode, there are 18 doors with various cards on them. The cards all have a word that starts with A, B or C on it. There is a picture of the word above it (Boat…) and the picture is in a certain color - Red, Green, Blue or Yellow. And then there is 1 to 4 of the copies of the item on the card. Oh - and they are wrapped up in shapes like circles or triangles or squares. Whew. Lots of dimensions.

Then, you choose a “playing” card. Say it comes up Red. You get to match red with one of the doors and open the door. Under 1/3 of the doors, there is a ball! You get to pick the ball up and put it into the magic river. Once 6 balls are in the magic river, the treasure chest opens up.

You’re supposed to take turns and such. But our little guy was just getting into the concept of using the key to open the door and then sometimes finding a ball. He was really happy when he found the ball. And opening the treasure chest? Lots of fun. The downside was that the gem that’s revealed in the treasure chest, well, it is glued to the chest. Our boy wanted to take that out and play with it.

Anyway - so we’ve gone through the board a few times, lots of doors opened. Over time, we figure he’ll get more into the rules of the game - matching colors, or numbers, or letters, or shapes. Then we’ll learn how to take turns. And how to compete!

Once we get through this mode though, there is also an “advanced” mode. Where there are 1-10 objects. And the clue cards go from A-Z. When you pick a letter, you can open a door as long as the word contains the letter (instead of starts with - so a Y card can open up the “bicycle” door). So we figure this game can scale pretty well over the next couple of years.

As long as we don’t break it too much. Still, it’s a great first game for us.

Tags: parenting, games, cariboo, cariboo review

Read a post over on Minti about attaching ID tags to car seats. In case of accidents, you might be separated, so having that information on the seat could be super useful. One thing the article didn’t mention, but came to mind for me, was using a luggage tag for the info.

Tags: parenting, car-seat-id-tags

And it seems complicated from the start. I mean, it is tough figuring out who you’ll trust with your kid. Trust to take care of. Trust to nurture. Trust to educate. Trust to help form their perspective on life.

One really can’t figure all that out in a 45 minute interview.

Turns out the nanny we were hopeful about didn’t seem as “warm” as others, by mom’s standard. I felt okay. But mom’s got instincts I don’t have. And maybe I’m not as “warm” either, so it seems alright. We did find a “warmer” nanny. I felt she could have used a bit more sophistication, but she wasn’t going to hang out with me, so that didn’t matter too much. At 16 months old, Sal wasn’t going to complain about a lack of sophistication.

But he didn’t seem to warm up to her. And he’s going to have to spend time with her. We’ll see if we can get a trial day for them to see if they can’t get along a bit better.

There is another one too - one that he is warmer with, who seems to be a real good fit. Just that she’s $18 an hour, wants the 10 national holidays paid, and 2 weeks of paid vacation. Another family is interested in her too. They’re willing to give her all that, plus, when they take a vacation, they’ll pay her too. That way, she’s not out of work while they’re on vacation. Very generous. We matched that offer, figuring, well, after paying her $18 an hour, we won’t be doing much vacationing anyway.

So - at first it seemed it would be hard to find the right nanny. Now we’re reminded, that when we find one, they’ll be the right nanny in many people’s eyes, and we’ll have to bid on their services.

What’s going to be our next surprise?

Tags: parenting, nanny

We recently got this peek-a-blocks bus toy as a gift for our son. It is a great looking gift. And we’re appreciative of the thought. Sorting toys are good for children’s mental development and motor skills development. And it first glance, it looks like it has got all the key requirements for a great little toy:

• Shape sorter.
• Plenty of different blocks.
• Lights.
• Sounds.
• Things that rattle.
• Things that move (hood and dumper)
• Things that spin.
• A realistic stop sign on the side of the bus
• A random apple (lots of our toys have random apples - I don’t know why. But it seems to be a key item.)

BUT…(you could feel that coming, huh?) the toy itself sucks. This toy, on paper, sounds great, but as I’ve played with it I’ve gotten real disappointed. I can look past the fact that there is no “story” behind what you’re doing. No proper workflow. Okay. That isn’t a requirement. I can accept that. The dumper serves no purpose. Fine. It just might be fun for fun’s sake.

But when you put things through the sorter, they jam the sorter and then you need to move them along, to put another item through the sorter. So sorting isn’t an enjoyable experience - it is a chore. You can’t just put shapes in and in and in. I can’t put two triangles through in a row. Need to do one, then lift the panel, move it out of the way, then put in the next. Jeez - to play with the sorting panel, I need to do all this other stuff…why?

Plus the main sorting panel doesn’t include the square. The square is on the side of the bus. Why? I don’t know. Maybe to justify putting a little stop sign on the side of the bus? Anyway, what I know is that the main sorting panel does include a large hole with trimmed corners. But it is so large that any shape can fit through it. Putting a block through here plays music. The one hole which fits any of the blocks is the one that plays music? Why would one learn to sort shapes when you can use the catch-all hole that plays music?

I feel the product manager had a checklist for what sorting toy should have - and it was just a list of features, without any associated behaviors. Without the child’s experience in mind at all. Just checking off items in a list: 3 types of holes (check!), a hole with music (check!), a thing that spins (check!), a freaky apple…etc.

Though they’ve satisfied their list of requirements, the end product is nothing more than a smattering of features with no synergy or cohesiveness. I’m looking for toys that will engage my son and his imagination - not something that is feature rich but useless.

Mom has decided to go back to work. We’ve thought over the options: day care, nannies, co-ops, friends with kids, nanny-shares, and grandparents. We’re going to try the nanny route. We feel that’ll give our boy the most attention and nurturing at his young age.

He is in enough classes (swim class, pre-pre-school, gym class and music class) that we feel he has enough socialization opportunities. Also, play groups spin off from those classes, so there are other little group activities besides the regular 4 classes a week. So we want a nanny that will be enthusiastic about his classes.

Since he’s also using sign language (and more verbal words too) we want a nanny that can continue his education in both signing and speaking. And his mish-mash in between (where he’ll say “woof” and then sign for eating to signal that he wants to feed our dog).

And we’re looking for more than just an adult playmate for him. Sure - lots of the learning he is doing now is play related, but there are some games that exercise the mind more than others. We want a nanny that will pay attention to the small differences and look for ways to engage our boy in fun, learning activities. We also want someone to help us with our next hurdle, which seems like it will be discipline. Another playmate won’t be much help for that challenge.

Basically, we want better versions of ourselves. Professionals, you know. Which is making the search a bit difficult. Some nannies just want to feed the baby and play and don’t mention much about education during the interview. Others are taking English on as a new language and that makes things difficult for us. If Spanish was their native tongue, we’d probably look for ways of splitting the difference, but so far, that hasn’t been the case. Others like to play up the duel role of housekeeper/nanny. Which sounds like a nice thing - but in the end - we prefer that the nanny focuses on our boy and not the house. He’s much more valuable.

One nanny does look hopeful though. She knows sign language. She mentioned she reads child development books while the baby naps. I’m looking forward to sharing books and discussing their points of view with her if we do hire her. Not as just a way to follow-up on whether she is actually reading - but to engage with others about specific points around our boy’s development. I think she was a bit taken aback, as most of the points she probably typically uses to “wow” the potential parents with (sign language, child development background, etc.) were things we were just using as requirements for the position.

She did impress me with her photo album though. I realized, looking through it, how it really was more than just a scrapbook, but an advertisement of her abilities. How the kids looked genuinely happy - no fake smiles. How they were in a variety of settings and how she handled a variety of children. Those pictures actually helped me feel much more comfortable with her - beyond all the small talk about child rearing philosophies.

We’ve still got a few more to interview and references to check out. But the references I’m sure will be fine. It’ll just take time to get used to trusting a stranger with our baby. That’s why we are still flying the grandmothers out for a while.

And cause there’s that housekeeping issue still up in the air…

Tags: parenting, nanny