Kids and the Holidays

When you become an adult, sometimes you get a little jaded with the Christmas holidays.  Dealing with traffic, shopping, family drama.  It wasn't always like this for me, when I was a kid, I got very excited about the holidays.  I would count the number of days until Christmas morning and go to sleep early, feeling that this would cause Christmas to come earlier. In the days before Christmas, I would play with Matchbox cars under the presents, and leave them there for Christmas morning.

Now that we have kids, the magic of the holidays has come back for me. Seeing the kids so excited about Christmas makes all of the craziness of the holidays worth it.  We went to a Christmas tree farm and cut down a Christmas tree for the first time. Our daughter sing Christmas songs in the back seat of the car.  Our son likes to rearrange the ornaments on the tree, over and over again.

Is is really nice to see the kids so excited about Christmas.  I have been lucky enough to be able to take the last two weeks of the year off, and I am enjoying the time with the kids.

Kinect

A few weeks ago we got a Kinect for our Xbox 360.  The Kinect sensor allows you to use your body as a controller for games. The implementation that Microsoft makes it very easy to get into the games.

We used to have a Wii, and the kids, especially the younger ones, had a hard time using the Wiimote, especially when absolute movement is needed.  The kids really enjoy the Kinect.  They haven't had any problem playing the games.  They really like playing Kinect Adventures and Kintectimals.  Our 6-year-old daughter has a lot of fun playing Dance Central.

I would recommend Kinect for any family with kids, especially if you already have an Xbox in the house.

Dad Life

This is a great video

Toy Story 3 Video game

Our son likes to have time where he can play video games with just me.  It is one of the things that we do in our father-son time. A few weeks ago, I got the Toy Story 3 video game for our Xbox 360, and I was saving it for the next time that we played video games.

A few days ago, when my wife was putting the girls to sleep, I showed the game to our son and mentioned that we could play for an hour, if he wanted to. He was very excited, about playing the game.

We had a great time playing the game.  He spent a lot of time, mining for gold, while I off on other missions.  We only played an hour, but there are some things that stand out about the game.

1. The controls are easy enough for kids to not get frustrated with


2. When playing with two people, it is a split-screen game, so even though each person might be on different areas of the map, you both can make progress.  (This a problem in the lego video games, where if the players don't stick together, one can get stuck at the edge of the viewable area of the map.)

End of an Era

We have reached a milestone as parents, after almost 8 years, all of our kids are completly out of diapers and pull-ups now.  A few weeks ago, our youngest decided that she wanted to use the toilet whenever she wanted to go.

With this change, we won't need to keep a recepticle to keep the dirty diapers, our Costco trips will be smaller, and we could even potentially get a smaller garbage can from the city.

Now it will be easier to take family trips, as we won't have to worry about packing enough pull-ups.  But, we just have to make sure we are in range of a bathroom.

Smelly Locker: Silly Dilly School Songs

Smelly Locker is a fun book for kids where the words for common kids songs are changed to humorous stories about a kids life at school.  We got this book a few years ago for our son, as a fun book for him to read.

Our daughters asked me to read the book to them for bedtime. Reading the book was hilarious.  I had a hard time keeping the melody with the differences in the lyrics from the usual song, but the kids really enjoyed it.

Massively Multiplayer Online Game for Kids

Our son loves Legos.  He loves building the sets, and then coming up with his own creations and playing with them.  Lego has really been marketing their Lego Universe massively multiplayer online game, and have been including fliers with purchases from the Lego Store.

Of course, our son wanted to sign up.  We don't feel comfortable with any of our kids playing online.  We want to make sure that we know who they are communicating with, and with a MMOG, there is a level of anonymity that the game provides, and I am sure that people take advantage of it.   (They do state that they will be moderating the online play experience to make sure that kids stay safe.)

We talked with him about our concerns, and he understands why we won't let him play this game.  Maybe when he is older we will let him play online.