Presto! Longer Onesies

As silly as I thought the baby legwarmers were, the garment extenders are awesome. My 13-month old has a very, very long torso and he has been outgrowing his onesies very quickly. I want to use onesies, because they keep his 'shirt' tucked in (and thus his tummy and back warm), but they just weren't fitting long enough. These extenders really helped.

My only complaint is the one I've seen on all the sites with feedback areas: the pack is a 'variety pack' but there is really one size that works with everything. So you end up using two all the time, and the others sit in a drawer. I wish you could buy each size separately once you know which one you need.

Goodbye, weather.com! Hello, Underground!

I was wading through the jungle of crap on weather.com the other day, trying to dredge out a forecast for my friend Jim. He looks over my shoulder and says to me, "You need to go to weather underground. One visit and you'll never look back."

So, I linked over to Weather Underground (wunderground.com) and I was practically blown away with the utter magnificence of this weather website.

You aren't immediately attacked by multiple ad pop-ups. It is a clean, calm interface. As soon as you type in the zip code of the city you want, you are presented with a clear, concise, well-formatted page of all the info you want. I've always had trouble finding humidity on weather.com, but on wunderground.com it was right there in front of me. The 5-day forecast is clear, and they have a super-cool feature where they compare today with yesterday (e.g., Today will be colder than yesterday). And your last 5 city searches are remembered on the left, so you can quickly check the main places you want to know weather forecasts for.

In short, Jim was right. This site is fabulous. Double-thumbs up for weather underground!!!

Do it Yourself Baby Legwarmers

I laughed at the $11.95 price tag on these "Baby Legwarmers."

Really? Are you kidding me?

Try this on for size:
Find an old pair of knee socks -- one with heels that are almost worn through -- and cut the feet off. PRESTO! Instant baby legwarmers ... probably much better looking than the wacky, fashion-victim patterns that are on sale in stores.

Everyone needs a new TV by Feb 2009, huh?

Years ago, when I first heard about the government mandated shift to high definition, my first thought was "Yeah, right. This is going to be an exercise in permanent postponement" Shockingly, I have been correct in this assessment. Yet again, the mandatory transition from analog to digital television broadcasting has been postponed, from February 17 to June 12, 2009.

The part of this whole ordeal that is surprising is how little Media attention this has garnered over the past months.

• Why haven't there been complaints regarding the vast government sponsorship of the electronics industry? In particular the companies manufacturing these converter boxes?
• Where is the social commentary? The poor and the elderly are clearly impacted by this transition. Heck, I imagine that some people don't even know it is going to happen, honestly, and they'll just be very surprised one day when their TV stops working
• Have I somehow missed the environmental uproar? Given that most affluent consumers are simply going to trash their old TVs -- for no other reason than this mandated change -- and get new ones? And thousands of perfectly good TVs are going to end up in our dumps?
• Is there not one investigative journalist who thought it would be interesting to compare the lobbying effort that helped to pass this mandate with the combined forces that made marijuana illegal (thus boosting the tobacco, cotton, and wood pulp industries in the process) and the Great American Streetcar scandal (where established urban streetcar systems were dismantled by the american automotive industry, in order to sell more automobiles. )

Not one journalist thinks any of these topics are worth investigating? I guess not. I suppose this is because they've all been too busy covering the more important stories, like the ever-growing family size of Brad and Angelina.

But now that the Campaign is over, and Obamessiah is in office, and the Pitts aren't quite ready to have another baby, we are finally starting to see a few stories on this topic. Will the transition ever happen? Maybe. Personally, I've got my coupons in hand and I'll be going to get my boxes, soon. Do I need the coupons? No. Can I pay for the boxes myself? Of course I can, just like most folks who have requested these coupons. But I guess this topic isn't interesting to reporters, either. Oh look ... is that Britney over there? Quick! There's news to be told!

Cover the Event, Please

Unless you are hibernating in a cave somewhere, you probably watched, listened, or read about the Obama Inauguration today. This was one of my days home with my 1-year old (he'll be 1 year old in about 2 hours!), and so I was lucky enough to be able to watch a great deal of television coverage.

I rotated between the big 3 TV networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC.
As we live 15 minutes outside of Washington DC, we had non-stop coverage all day, even when the nationals went to 'local' coverage.

I want to applaud the local coverage. It was interesting. They talked about road closures, metro issues, parking problems, etc. It was just the sort of stuff that we locals can't really get enough of.

The national coverage went off the path a bit. What I wanted to see and hear about was what was happening right then and there. But for the most part, especially during the parade, what the announcers were talking about had nothing to do with what was being shown on the screen.

Example:
As the new first couple left the Capitol building, the cameras showed a very interesting colonial marching band. I wondered ... is this a military band? A band from Colonial Williamsburg? Unfortunately, the announcers were interviewing some talking head pundent (I think it was Jesse Jackson in this case, on ABC) about race relations in the USA, blah-blah. This is what people have been talking about for MONTHS. Could they have not covered the moment and talked about what was happening? As my husband wryly commented, "Of course not ... that would take research. It is much easier to just snap photos and editorialize so you don't need to really know what is going on."

Some of the stations did better at times. I believe it was NBC who had a former police chief with them, and he was talking about security. For example: He noted that the motorcycle police had the side carts on their motorcycles so that the motorcycles would be stable at such low speeds. That was interesting.

Even if the quality of commentary was not exactly what I was hoping for, it was still great to see such an array of live coverage. It really felt like being there, but about 60-degrees warmer.

Chronicles of the New Giant: New Giant = New Stop and Shop

As I pointed out in my first post about 'New Giant,' both Giant and Stop & Shop are owned by Royal Ahold, and both were rebranded with the funky fruit basket logo. Interestingly enough, they have continued to print the names "Giant" or "Stop & Shop" on the various items like bags, receipts, etc. However, it is pretty obvious that at some point they are going to merge into one name as the clearly share the same system.

Case in point: I got several point-of-sale coupons for baby food while I was in Connecticut, visiting a Stop & Shop. When I returned to DC, I redeemed them at Giant. No muss or fuss. The computer read them properly with no complaints. (Whoo-hoo!)

I wonder what they will call the new combined store? "Stop Giant" doesn't sound so great. I'm sure they'll come up with something.

Toys, Toys, Toys

Christmas was a whirlwind for us. But now we are catching our breath and taking in the cornucopia of gifts that 'santa' brought. (Please note that we, his parents, bought him absolutely nothing. Everything came from his grandparents and our friends.)

There are 3 in particular worth mentioning.

Busy Gears

Nanna picked up this toy for us, and I thought 'Oh no, not another toy,' BUT I must say that Hasbro Playskool Busy Gears holds the interest of our 11-month-old longer than any other toy we have, with the exception of Mozart's Magic Cube which is the best toy EVER. Yes, I do realize that the recommended age for Busy Gears is 12 months to 3 years, but I believe that is scaled way too high. As other reviews have noted, a bunch of spinning gears isn't very exciting for a 2+ year old.

PROS: bright gears, seems durable (so far), colors, lights and music are diverting for a little one.

CONS: No extra gears, stacking the gears is a miraculous feat, and the carrying handle is a ridiculous feature given that as soon as the product is held upright all of the gears topple to the floor (as nothing but gravity holds them on to begin with). Made in China.

BOTTOMLINE: A good bet. I'd definitely buy it again

Busy Zoo

I guess anything with the word 'busy' in the title must be good, eh?

Grandma and Grandpa gave him the Busy Zoo activity center. At first he only paid attention to the beads on the top, which he tried and tried to pull off. Now he is looking at the various doors and spinners on the sides, too. He crawls right over to it when I put him down and he enjoys it a lot. His Ultrasaucer has been left in the dust by Busy Zoo.

PROS: Bright colors, well made, not HUGE like the saucers and other toys

CONS: Still large enough and heavy enough to not be terribly portable. Made in China.

BOTTOMLINE: It's awesome ... but shop around before you buy. It is listed as $250 on
Amazon, but it was $50 at Target.

Rescue Rider

A friend of ours has finished having her kids and gave us her used 'Rescue Rider' fire truck. All 3 of her kids loved it. It's a little beat up, and it's missing it's horn and radio, but he just loves it. He pushes it around like he does his tiny toy cars. But what he really likes is that the seat opens up to reveal a storage area, and I've put blocks in here. So he loves to 'open' and 'close' the seat to see the blocks.

PROS: Made in USA, very durable as it survived 3 kids and still works, bright red color

CONS: I don't think this is made anymore, so it's not available for purchase. In fact, I don't think that Tim Mee Toys exists anymore. I've searched and searched, but can't find any reference to them other than vintage toys at Ebay. There is one review online at ePinions from someone who had issues with her child continually flipping over in the Rescue Rider, but my friend never had that issue with any of her 3 children, and I'm going to keep it on the carpet with my son, so I'm not too worried about this.

BOTTOMLINE: Any toy can be dangerous, depending on the child and the situation. We're going to let him continue to enjoy it, and maybe we'll pass it along to a 5th child someday.