Twitter: Follow TBOmom on Twitter

Review week: Burp cloth luxury

Posted Nov 2, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Nov 2, 2011 at 10:32 AM

For the first nine months of my son’s life, I kept a burp cloth within easy reach. I had them stashed in diaper bags and strategically located in the bedrooms and living room, and I was never without one slung over my shoulder.

Nate had reflux, which meant a lot of what went in came bubbling out.

Babies in general are messy creatures, and – reflux or not – new parents do a lot of wiping up dribbles, drool, burps and more. I used anything that was handy and clean, from organic cotton cloths to plain cloth diapers to washcloths. I even had a fancy one that a friend had personalized that I saved for public use. Ah, vanity.

BabbaCo’s BabbaBurpie is made to be seen. It’s a deluxe burp cloth that makes spitting up a much more fashionable experience. The French terry cloth comes in cream and chocolate brown, trimmed prettily in florals or swirls.

And it has a secret weapon. It’s sewn like a pocket, so when one side gets pukey and icky, you just turn it inside out, and there’s a fresh new side to use. The material is thick enough that the damp won’t seep through.

Actually, it’s so thick that it makes the cloth a little bulky, so it’s not as easy to cram into your diaper bag. On the other hand, it’s large and has four sides available to use, which means you wouldn’t need to carry multiple cloths with you. And did I mention the BabbaBurpie is really pretty?

Besides, the neat pocket design means that when the burping ceases, you can repurpose the BabbaBurpie to hold soiled clothes, tiny toys or other odds and ends. When something spills, you’ll be equipped – stylishly – too.

---

Review week: Putumayo goes beyond music

Posted Nov 1, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Oct 28, 2011 at 02:48 PM

Even if you’ve never listened to the music, you’re bound to recognize the Putumayo CD line from the colorful, boldly outlined drawings. Now the music label is expanding on its distinctive art work with its World Culture Collection of coloring and sticker books.

The company sent me the Latin America Sticker Collection and the Europe Coloring Book, and my first thought was that they were way too gorgeous to hand over to actual children.

The coloring books (there’s also one for Africa and Latin America) are printed on oversized paper with eco-friendly soy ink and walk you through the culture, landmarks, animals and musical instruments of the regions. Glossaries give additional information about what the children are seeing.

The Europe book takes you to the Parthenon, the Eiffel Tower and – the scene I was dying to color – Neuschwanstein castle in Germany. One page shows European flags and has space to design your own flag as well.

Although I wanted to do it myself, I passed it along to my friend’s 5-year-old son, because I’m nice like that. He’s a conscientious colorer and works hard to stay in the lines. Zane also is a budding reader and enjoyed learning the words that accompanied the scenes, his mom reports. It’s a book with enough meat to interest older children, too.

My 2-year-old got the sticker book to play with, and like the coloring book, it skews to older kids. He still liked playing with it – the hardcover book folds out to a scene and you can arrange people, birds, trees, buses and instruments around the landscape. The stickers are reusable and peel off easily. My son was a little too rough with the delicate figures and a few arms got ripped off in the process.

For preschool or early elementary school, it would be wonderful. It includes a colorful map of the region’s countries as well.

The coloring books retail for $9.95 each and the sticker collection is $11.95. You’ll be begging for a turn to play, too.

---

Review week: Cinderella hits the iPad

Posted Oct 31, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Oct 28, 2011 at 02:38 PM

I’m a newspaper girl and a bookstore lover. I like the feel of paper in my hands. I like to browse bookshelves. I think the Internet is cool (hi, blog), but I would be one sad writer if the print industry dried up completely.

That said, publishers can do fantastic things with technology. The best ones don’t just reproduce texts digitally, they enhance the story with movement, music or additional information that you’re not going to get from a static book. And that’s why digital books are starting to earn a place in my son’s library next to hard copies of old classics and new favorites.

If you want to see the potential the iPad holds for beautiful, interactive storytelling, you need to meet Nosy Crow’s “Cinderella.”

Nosy Crow, a year-old London-based children’s book and app publisher, released its second 3-D fairy tale app last month. Designed for children ages 3 and older, the familiar story has received a modern makeover with ways kids can participate and funny asides from characters.

I fell in love with Nosy Crow’s first effort, the “Three Little Pigs,” earlier this year. It’s the kind of book I suggest reading to my son just because I like it. As he has gotten older and more skilled on the iPad (by “more skilled” I mean, he touches it gently instead of smacking it hard), he has enjoyed making cars honk, pigs jump and wolves howl.

Nosy Crow expands on this interactivity with “Cinderella.”

Readers can tap and stack invitations for the king, put logs on a fire and fetch odds and ends for the fairy godmother. You get to pick the color of Cinderella’s dress, and, if your device has a forward-facing camera, your face pops up in the magic mirror.

Like “Pigs,” you can still make the characters hop around and tap them to hear their commentary.

In fact, the only down side is there is so much to do on each page that it can tax small children’s attention spans. I expect my son will grow into the app. He’s only 2 now, a year younger than the suggested age, so he doesn’t have the patience I do to explore the story to the fullest. Some of the tasks, like moving plates around Cinderella’s kitchen, also were tough for his (and my) clumsy fingers.

But this is an engaging read. The company compares it to moving characters around a virtual dollhouse, and that’s part of the reason it appeals to me – I always loved my dollhouse. As a mom, though, I appreciate that it makes reading a more active experience. I don’t prop him up in front of the iPad and let him zone out. We sit down together and play with the story.

You’ll find it for iPad for $7.99 and the iPhone and iPod Touch for $4.99 through the App Store.

---

How old is too old to trick or treat?

Posted Oct 28, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Oct 27, 2011 at 03:53 PM

I ducked into one of those pop-up costume shops a couple of weekends ago to look for the finishing touches I needed for my son’s Halloween costume. He’s going as Pittsburgh Steeler Troy Polamalu, and I was hoping for some eye-black stickers and a tot-sized crazy wig.

No luck. The selection of toddler and child costumes was paltry. They occupied a mere aisle and a half in the store, which was otherwise stuffed with all sorts of decidedly adult outfits. I left empty-handed.

Wasn’t Halloween supposed to be a children’s holiday?

Halloween was pretty straightforward when I was growing up. Mom made my brother’s and my costumes or bought us those sets with a (probably flammable) shiny gown and plastic mask I could barely breathe in.

I walked around the neighborhood trick-or-treating and was home early enough to watch “The Cosby Show.” (Am I dating myself?) One neighbor usually went all out to try to scare kids who came to his door. Another gave out toothbrushes.

The adults back then played a supporting role in our Halloween. Now the holiday has shifted more and more into grown-up hands. Martha Stewart leads the pack, with ghostly appetizers, elaborate costumes and creepy-cool home decorations. The theme parks set up haunted houses that no parent would ever want to bring children to – unless they enjoy soothing frightened kids with bad dreams after midnight.

And the costumes. Wow. I have never felt like so much of a prude as I did a few years ago when I was looking through the mass-market costumes for something I could wear to a Halloween party. I didn’t realize so many professions could be turned “naughty.” Naughty firefighter. Naughty referee. Naughty clown?

But trick-or-treat night should still fall in the little guys’ domain.

It’s flat-out illegal in some cities to trick or treat once you hit the teen years. We don’t have that here in Tampa, but most parents have a general idea of how old is too old to trick or treat.

The Today Show’s parenting website posted a poll this month where more than half of the 18,000 respondents said 13 to 15 fell in the “too old to trick-or-treat” category.

As one of my friends said in a Facebook discussion on the topic: “If you can drive, you don’t trick or treat.”

Other moms who posted didn’t understand the fuss. One said she collected candy all through high school and has no problem passing it out to anyone now – no matter how old – because it’s all in good fun.

Costumes seem to be key.

“As long as you’re in costume, adults should be able to trick-or-treat as well,” one mother wrote. “Why do only the little kids get to have all the fun?”

The lack of costumes probably bothers me more than the age of the visitors at my door. I’m not nervy enough to turn kids away, but I like a little effort. After all, I went to the trouble of buying the candy. At least make an attempt at dressing up.

Older trick-or-treaters need to respect the clock, too. We shut our lights off around 9 p.m., the universal “no more trick-or-treaters” signal in my mind. By this time the youngest kids have come through, and I need to get the dishes done, put the kiddo to bed and give myself some time to unwind. It’s unnerving to get a knock on the door at 10 p.m. from a teenager I don’t even know.

Yes, I said I like costumes, but a Scream mask at that time of night is not what I had in mind, either.

I’d love to be able to keep Halloween as a night for the little kids and give them a chance to play. If you want to play, too, you’re welcome to join. But remember you’re in their sandbox – play by their rules.

 

---

Green Halloween at Whole Foods unmasks healthier choices

Posted Oct 26, 2011 by Courtney Cairns Pastor

Updated Oct 26, 2011 at 01:19 PM

I think I have found a compromise for my conflicting feelings about Halloween.

I wrote recently about how fun the holiday is becoming for my son and how part of me wants to embrace it and the other part is kind of appalled at the excess.

Not to mention, do I really want to have all that candy around me? I don’t exactly need to be putting on pounds before we even get to Thanksgiving and Christmas – when I know I will have more than enough delicious things tempting me. I’d rather save my calorie budget for peppermint mochas and my butter-laden corn casserole and other goodies unique to that time of year than candy I could buy at any time.

But between the candy my son will collect trick-or-treating and the leftovers from what I pass out (I overbuy; I don’t want to run out!), we’re bound to have lots of candy in the house.

Green Halloween gives some good ideas for this issue.

Corey Colwell-Lipson and her mother, Lynn Colwell, started Green Halloween in Seattle in 2007 and expanded the movement nationally the following year. It came to Tampa in 2009.

You can check it out yourself from 3 to 6 p.m. Oct. 29 at Whole Foods, 1548 North Dale Mabry Highway. Local vendors set up around the store to showcase their products, all emphasizing making healthy choices for you and the environment. Whole Foods’ healthy eating specialist will have recipes and samples of foods to try, and kids will get to trick-or-treat around the store.

Costumes are welcome, and there will be a costume contest around 5 p.m. You don’t have to wear something tied to the green theme, but it may help. Last year’s winner was a litterbug – a bug costume covered in trash.

I know we’re not ready to cut out the candy, but I’m hoping going to the Green Halloween event will give me some ideas for alternatives. I’m thinking of offering a mix of the traditional chocolates with maybe pretzels or fruit strips, or possibly including “treasures” instead of treats, as the Green Halloween web site suggests. Little containers of Play-Doh, bubbles, stickers and temporary tattoos all are popular with kids.

I’d rather have leftover Play-Doh than candy that, let’s face, I am going to want to eat.

It’s a small start to a healthier holiday but sometimes small starts are more likely to stick.

---