You know, I’ve always preferred Luvs diapers. I used them with Kayley, way back in the day when they still were plastic on the outside, before all diapers were “cloth-like.” I kind of miss the crinkly-sounding diapers sometimes! I used them with all four of the littlest ones, too. I did find, though, that when we got into the BIG sizes, they tended to leak a little bit. I wrote about that here, when I was trying to find something to put on Pablo at night that wouldn’t leak all over his bed, or worse, explode little pee-scented gel beads all over his bed.

Currently, we’re using Huggies for Pablo and Mallory. The two of them are potty trained, but still pee during the night, so we actually don’t go through all that many. A big package lasts us awhile! They’re quite a bit more expensive than Luvs, not to mention, they don’t have BLUE from Blues Clues printed on them, which is a big bummer, but hey – I go with what works, y’know?

Well! I’m happy to report that Luvs has redesigned their diapers to include Bear Hug Stretch – the tapes on the sides are like elastic. And moreso than other diapers that also claim to have stretchy sides – trust me, I’ve tried them all! I had a chance to try out Luvs new Bear Hug Stretch diapers on all the kids last night, and guess what? Everyone had dry beds. Yay! I like how they stretch SO much that it feels like I’m getting them on the girls really snug and well-fitting, so they don’t have that weird rectangle-butt thing going on under their pants.

I’m really pleased! I always love it when companies LISTEN to the feedback they’re getting and actually make changes when necessary. I especially love it when it’s a company I like anyway. Just makes me like them that much more. So – if you stopped buying Luvs because they were leaky, maybe give them another try. I’m not sure if all the stores are carrying them yet – it’s kind of a brand new thing. Keep an eye open for them, though. I’m embarrassed by how excited I am to be buying Blues Clues diapers again. The kids just love them so much! It’s the little things, I guess.

Okay, so you know I’m passionate about children and stimulating their little growing minds, whether through books or music or dancing or watching certain things on TV. Not just my kids, but all kids! I get SO annoyed when I see preschool-age kids mindlessly zoning out in front of some of the stupid, poorly animated cartoons they have on TV – I’m like, haven’t you ever heard of Sesame Street? Only the best kids’ show ever made, people! It actually cracks me up how fiercely I’ll protect “the good shows” like that – if you only KNEW how many times I stood up for Barney from about 1996-1999! Yeah, he might have been purple and goofy, but he taught Kayley about cleaning up, brushing her teeth, understanding her feelings, etc. And don’t even get me started about Mister Roger’s Neighborhood! I cried when he died – he was such a huge part of my own childhood! I think it just really touches me when people put true effort and dedication into making something for our kids that’s really special, that’s really going to teach them something and entertain them at the same time.

So, naturally, when I found out about a new live-action music show for kids called Yo Gabba Gabba! on Nick Jr., I was excited to check it out. It turns out, the creators of the show put the trailer on the net and used viral marketing to get the word out about their project, which was eventually picked up by Nick Jr. Their company, The Magic Store, was formed by a couple of skater guys who are my age! I love thinking about a couple of “Gen X” dads who direct skateboarding and music videos turning to the children’s television industry. And the show is *awesome* – it has such a fun, comfortable, completely retro feel, I have found. It really reminds me of some of the stuff we watched when we were kids. And the music is by The Shins! How could you not love it?

We received a DVD from Nick Jr. of the premier episode, “Eat”, and my kids have watched it literally a dozen times now. They are obsessed with the music and as soon as any of the songs begin, they’re off the couch, jumping around and dancing. Mallory loves the little girls on the show who wear cute little dresses and make funny faces and dance around – she wants to BE one of them. Nick Jr. has printable iron-ons from the show available on their site, so I might make her a little matching jumper dress like theirs so she CAN be one of them! Our younger twins love it too; they keep coming up to me, saying, “Wan’ watch Dabba Dabba Dabba!” And I think it’s GREAT for autistic kids like Pablo – he loves the big, bright characters, and there’s just enough repetition throughout the show that it keeps his attention and keeps him engaged in the dancing and music. There’s a segment in the premier with Elijah Wood in it, showing the kids how to do this simple little fun dance called The Puppet Master, and all four of my kids have mastered it and do it right along with the TV. I was going to get a picture of them doing it last night, but I left my camera in the van – d’oh!

I can’t wait to see more episodes now. They have lots of cool guest stars, too – I already mentioned Elijah Wood – the episode guide lists Mya, The Shins, Sugarland, Rahzel, Tony Hawk, Laila Ali, Sean Kingston, Nikki Flores, Hector Jimenez, Smoosh, The Aquabats, The Aggrolites, and Cornelius. And Biz Markie is going to be in a recurring role, teaching preschoolers how to Beat Box!

The show revolves around the host, DJ Lance Rock, and his set of toy monsters (and one robot), who he brings to life in each episode by saying, “Yo Gabba Gabba!” The characters include Muno the red cyclops, Foofa the pink flower bubble, Brobee the “little green one”, Toodee the blue cat-dragon, and Plex the robot. They sing and dance and go through little life lessons, and it’s never lame or boring. I find myself singing the songs later on, especially the “Party in my Tummy” song!

Mark your calendars, people! The show is premiering on Monday, August 20th, in a simulcast on Nick Jr. and Noggin at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time. In the meantime, you can see a brand new music video from the show every Friday until then during the “Nick Jr.’s Dance Party” lineup, and yesterday, they started showing episodes and videos on OnDemand! Check it out – I’ll bet you will LOVE it, and your kids will too. Like I said, my kids are completely obsessed already, and we’ve only watched the first episode!

I know people are passionate about these things! I’ve seen a surprising amount of online debates about the worthiness of Magic Erasers, as well as all the warnings about children burning their skin on them, etc. I just wanted to give my personal stamp of approval to them. Yesterday, me and my Mr. Clean Magic Eraser cleaned crayon off of our kitchen table, chairs, floor, the side of the freezer, and part of the sliding glass door. Then, I took it outside and scrubbed the hell out of the toy kitchen I just got from my best friend, which had been living in her backyard for the past year. It looks practically new now, and you know how hard it is to get those plastic Little Tikes toys clean! They really seem to absorb the dirt. One word of advice: don’t cheap out and buy an off-brand. I bought the Target brand one day, and they didn’t work for shit! Splurge on the real deal, and marvel at how it removes crayon as if erasing a marker board!

I’ve been meaning to mention something cool that happened to me recently – I was contacted by a company called Brighter Minds Media, and they asked me if they could send me some free educational products for me to review here on my blog. They asked for the ages of my kids, so they could send age-appropriate materials. You know my whole, “If it’s free, it’s for me!” philosophy, so I was completely tickled by this idea!

I got the stuff almost immediately, too. They sent two things – one was the DVD version of the game Nancy Drew – The Curse of Blackmoor Manor for Kayley, and the other was the book This Little Piggy for the little ones. Let me tell ya, Kayley was so stoked about getting something for her! It seems like she gets left out so often when we’re talking about getting stuff “for the kids” because we so often think of her as one of US, even though she’s still very much a little girl. So Kayley and I really enjoyed having some time together to check out the game.

It’s been about a week now, and we’ve had a chance to check everything out pretty thoroughly, so here are my thoughts on each product.

Nancy Drew – The Curse of Blackmoor Manor

When Kayley and I sat down together, we weren’t sure how this game really worked, because it just plays on your DVD player and doesn’t have a board or pieces or anything, like her other DVD games – she has SceneIt, the Disney edition, and she has Clue, which I imagined the Nancy Drew game would be a lot like. It’s NOTHING like those. You use the remote to move forward and “click” on items to pick them up, open doors, etc. I was frustrated to find that the game is not intuitive at all, and it took us about ten minutes of trial and error to even get started and get past the first obstacle or two. There really aren’t any instructions or “hints” included in the manual either, so we really weren’t sure WHAT to do at first.

Once we got into it, though, we really were enjoying ourselves for about a half an hour or so. We kept a notebook handy and made notes of things we would need to solve certain puzzles in order to move forward in the game. For example, we wrote the order of the zodiac signs, so we could enter them in order to unlock a box. It seemed like we were moving along great and then all of a sudden, we were just basically finished. We spent 45 minutes going over and over the same parts of the game again, trying to figure out what our next move should be, and we never could figure it out. Everywhere we tried to turn or advance, it would say, “I can’t get in there yet” or “I need the key to open this” or “I need something to wind this with!” But the key we found didn’t open anything, and we never figured out anything else. There’s a Task List you can refer to in the game to keep yourself on track and figure out what your next move needs to be, so we should have known what our next move was, but we could not figure it out at all. One of the things on the list was, “Check out the automatron in the great hall.” Um. What the hell is an automatron? Do you know? We do not. And believe me, we spent forever and a day clicking on every possible thing in that great hall, hoping some magic door would open or something, and nothing ever happened.

This game is designed for kids age TEN and up to play, but apparently my almost-12-year old and my thirty-something aged self are far too stupid to figure it out! So, naturally, I turned to the internet! I figured, other people must be playing this game. Either it’s frustrating the hell out of everyone, or we are REALLY dense and missing something completely obvious. Here is a snippet from one of the reviews on Amazon:

Puzzles: Argh! Just aargh! So many of them! And so tedious they were! The puzles just kept going and going. The game was long and involved. I couldn’t trigger some events in the game no matter how carefully I played or what walkthrough I followed. I ended up downloading saved games from other people to get past these parts of the game. It lessened the quality of the gameplay for me, to say the least.

Okay, so that chick had issues with the game as well. Most of the reviews, though, were very positive and talked about all kinds of interesting things in the game which were apparently way, way past the beginning of the game that where we were stuck. I even found a step-by-step tutorial of sorts, where it told you exactly what to do to get past each thing. Is that fun, though, referring to a website every three seconds while trying to enjoy a game? Not for me it isn’t. And also, the things it was saying were going to happen “You will receive a phone call from blah blah blah – you will talk to so and so…” We saw NOBODY in that game except for the stupid annoying parrot. I seriously don’t know what we were doing wrong, but we were ready to throw the game in the trash! It was SO frustrating, knowing that we had this potentially great game to play, and wasting our precious mommy/Kayley time trying to figure out how to get to the next step of this ridiculous game that offers NO instruction and apparently requires a WHOLE lot of trial and error and plain old LUCK to get through it. So. Big fat thumbs DOWN for the Nancy Drew game.

This Little Piggy
This is such a cute book. I knew right away my kids would like it, because they are currently at an age where they are obsessed with any and all farm animals. And when I saw that you could stick your fingers through the back of the puppet in the book and move his little piggy arms, it brought a whole new level to the book. Because really, it’s not a very long and engaging story. Ha! The book is like five pages long. Each page has one verse of This Little Piggy on it, and when you clap the piggy’s puppet hands together, he actually SAYS the verse out loud. Very cute. What I tried to do was make the piggy tell them a little mini story from the scene on each page, in a little piggy voice, like, “Hey, I’m going to the market! Anybody want to come with me? We’re going to get free cookies from the bakery and sit with our piggy brothers and sisters in the racecar cart! Come on, everybody!” and I would move the little piggy arms around all silly to make the kids laugh. Then we’d clap his hands to hear the verse, and then continue to the next page.

I’ve seen the kids playing together with the book, too, taking turns sticking their hand in the puppet and “reading” the story to each other. And I saw Mallory making the piggy hug her Barbie dolls too, which was pretty funny. So, yeah. Thumbs up for the book! I like that it’s a familiar little rhyme that they already know, but that we can expand on that and use our imaginations to make it more fun. We’re having fun with it.

I’ve been poking around on the Brighter Minds Media site and I see that they have lots and lots of games and books available. Some of the games really look like a lot of fun, and are probably way less complicated and annoying than the neverending torture that is the Nancy Drew game. And they have a lot of books that I’ve seen elsewhere, and a lot that I’ve never seen at all. I’m hoping if they decide to send me more stuff in the future, they include this book, which is about tracing shapes with your finger. I think Pablo would LOVE it – he is so into shapes right now, and one of the ways he learns is by touching. He sits with his MagnaDoodle every day and draws circles and rectangles and squares and ovals and shows them all to me over and over again.

So there you have it. Our experience with Brighter Minds has been perfectly splendid! We enjoyed checking out the products they picked out for us, and I could see doing business with them in the future!