Category Archives: Mom Talks Tech

traveling and kindle testing

This is like a new sweater or cool new pair of jeans which I bought weeks ago but which still have their tags on. I’ve been on the fence about the Kindle for a long time. I was still working for Amazon when the prototype was being handed around internally and I didn’t like the look and feel of the device. I decided to wait for v2.0 – since I’m very sure this team will raise their game with the next version. But then ‘an insider’ tipped me off about the $50 discount which came with Oprah’s endorsement of the product and I capitulated.

Funny capitulation. I took it out of it’s box, charged it up – was extremely impressed with the auto-registering and set-up – and sat down to read the 1st of my 14-day delivered-to-your-Kindle trial subscription to the New York Times. And I’ve barely touched it since. It turns out that I have no more time to read with a Kindle than I had without. Funny that. (# times I read more than the front headline on the NYT subscription before it expired? 1).

But in the next few days, I’ll be visiting with friends. We have a couple of flights, which will come with waiting time in the airport, and we’ll be taking public transport around San Francisco. I’ve loaded my Kindle up with some books and I’m looking forward to this test. It’s going to be fun – and a lot easier than carrying around a bunch of books. My challenge? Keeping my Kindle to myself. CAM has already eyed it up as “just fantastic”. Usually when we travel, he gathers up a monster pile of books to take with him. Which also usually prompts a fun mother-son “No, you can’t bring that much stuff” discussion. This time, the pile of books hasn’t materialized yet. I suspect we’ll be having a “What do you mean I can’t use your Kindle?” discussion instead.

Has anyone else tried the Kindle for traveling – inside or outside the U.S.? Or the Sony e-reader? Do you have preference?

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Tags:travel, traveling, kindle

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gift ideas for kids who travel

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It’s that time of year again folks, time to start thinking about holiday gifts. We’ll be traveling for Thanksgiving this year, so travel is on my mind as I start making my list and checking it twice. Thankfully, this holiday flight is only a short two-hour hop to the Bay Area. As I shop for my nieces and nephews, I can’t help but take a brief trip down memory lane, remembering how I used to keep my children amused on long flights when they were much younger – and of course, think about what works for us today.

Here’s a selection of the toys and games which worked for me – at different ages and stages. Check it out, let me know what you think. I have two boys, so there’s a noticeable lack of Barbie, Polly Pocket and even Bratz on this list. If you have a daughter and I’ve missed a toy or game which keeps her amused when you’re traveling, please, leave a comment and let me know!

Infant (0-6): The Baby Whoozit was a big hit with my boys at this age.

Toddlers (6-24 months): Ah, the ’20-second-attention-span’ age group. I’m sure I carried half my bodyweight in board books in our carry-on bags when my guys were active toddlers. Books by Eric Carle and Dr. Seuss (The Very Hungry Caterpiller, The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham) were favorites. Fabric Activity books such as the JUNGLE FUN BOOK by Gund were a nice relief and allowed for a little independent play. Closer to two, reusable sticker books were a big hit.

Preschoolers (2-4 yrs): I don’t homeschool (and would most likely really lose my marbles if I tried), but I do use a lot of homeschooling activity books for travel. They’re very like the Disney-themed activity books easily found in your local drugstore, but without the Disney characters or price tag. These Poof Slinky Buki activity books are excellent for very young children – particularly when there’s an older sibling to emulate On one occasion, in a busy Portugese restaurant, I had four preschoolers (one of mine and his cousins) quietly working on math problems using a Pre-K Workbook while their parents chatted – and helped with some problems. No magic, just some age-appropriate puzzles and a little competition.

This is a good age to introduce audiobooks. My boys started with $10 walkmans and only recently graduated to digital music players. You can now pick up an Apple iPod shuffle for less than $50 at Amazon and Walmart. Unfortunately, the trademark white earbud headphones are just a nuisance with little kids. CAM and BigB use noise-cancelling headphones from Sony. Kid-sized, kid-priced. They even come with their own carrying bag.

Elementary School Ages (5-11 yrs): A little Sudoku, maybe a crossword puzzle book, MadLibs, some audiobooks on (4gb) iPod or Zune, a pack of cards and we’re good to go. Oh, yes, and the dreaded handheld video games. Believe it or not, it is possible for a child to play with his Nintendo DS for eight straight hours on a transatlantic flight. I’m not proud of that fact. I wouldn’t mention it except I did enjoy the movie I was able to watch and being able to arrive at our destination somewhat refreshed after a pretty decent nap onboard.

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introducing a destination to your child

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Introducing a new place to a child is very different to introducing a new place to an adult. If you say “Paris” to most adults, they will likely think of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Champs-Ã‰lysÃ©es – regardless of whether or not they have ever visited Paris. If you say “Paris” to a four-year-old, she may think of her favorite Madeline book. But she may not realize that the Eiffel Tower exists as anything except the picture on the cover of the book.

I like to bring a destination alive to my children before we visit by reading books which are set in that location. My eight-year-old had very high expectations of Venice after reading Mary Pope Osborne’s Carnival at Candlelight. When we visited the city, he was tremendously excited to see the “real winged lion” on Basilica di San Marco (though he was a little disappointed that everyone in Venice wasn’t wearing costumes).

Reading like this works for younger children and specific topics such as art as well. For example, Debbie from DeliciousBaby talks about how she used My Name Is Georgia: A Portrait by Jeanette Winter to introduce her children to the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe before they visited the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe.

As we start pulling together ideas for our RTW trip, the WanderDad and I are both looking out for books which we can use to familiarize our children with history and culture of Asian countries – since we’re planning to start our trip in Asia. The Pet Dragon by Christoph Niemann is a colorful picture-book easily accessible to even a very young child. In it, Niemann cleverly depicts the Chinese Characters for commonly-used words within the illustrations without detracting from the story about Lin and her pet dragon.

Ji-Li Jiang’s biography, The Red Scarf Girl, about her adolescence in Shanghai at the start of the Cultural Revolution is a much more complicated story told in an authentic teenage voice. Her inital concerns about school, boys and peer pressure are quickly stripped away as the revolution takes hold and turns her life upside down. BigB read this book practically in one sitting, obviously intrigued by the story.

Do you have book recommendations for children’s books set in or about China, Japan, Thailand, Laos or Vietnam? If you do, please leave a comment with the book titles.

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learning a language with professor toto

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I’m excited to be hosting another giveaway! And even more excited that it’s part of Twitter Social – GNO, a TwitterMoms event. You can find out more about this fun online social event at GoodAndCrazyPeople or MommyGossip – these bloggers are the twittermom hosts.

Even though it’s a social event, GNO organizers do pick a theme topic for discussions. This week, the topic is Family Travel. I’ll be logging on to twitter, 6pm-late (PST) to chatter and answer any questions I can and generally own the soapbox on this, my favorite topic of conversation.

I decided that being a Guest Host for such an event was worth celebrating. Hence this giveaway. I have 7 Professor Toto Sing & Learn Starter Kits to give away: two each in Italian, French and German and one in Spanish. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your child starts to pick up vocabulary in another language through learning songs and rhymes with Professor Toto and his friends.

What
In this Professor Toto Starter Kit, children learn by listening to a CD and singing along to vocabulary-building songs, Paging through a glossy, full-color book with pictures of words they hear on the CD, and Coloring pictures of words they hear on the CD. Each kit contains:

1 Sing & Learn CD – 26 minutes. 15 Professor Toto vocabulary-building songs. 1 Sing & Learn Activity Book (24p Full Color). Each song is illustrated and translated. 1 Color & Learn Coloring Book (24p). Children color the words they’re hearing, so they visually reinforce their new vocabulary. 1 Professor Toto’s A+ Kids Club Certificate. Professor Toto’s at-home students fill in their names and hang their Professor Toto certificate on the wall. (7-3/8′ x 9/14″) 1 Full-Color Learning Guide.

How
Leave a comment below with saying why you feel learning another language is important for your child. Don’t forget to leave your email address so I have a way of contacting you.

Winners
UPDATE: I’ll choose a winner randomly and announce the results during the Twitter Social – GNO, at 8pm and 9pm (PST) or thereabouts. GNO gets a little crazy with up to 200 moms tweeting at the same time, so 9pm is a goal. (I’ll use email as my backup method to contact winners – see above).

8pm drawing winners
French: BethComingUp
Italian: 3_diva_girls
German: Jaime
Spanish: Amy

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kids food and travel

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My children are disgracefully fussy about food. I’m not going to even try to comprehend why. The genetics involved (i.e. mine and the WanderDad’s) should point towards adventurous palates with a penchant for hot and spicy. The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. I did an experiment once, and fed them their favorite food every day for dinner – wondering how long it would be before they would object. Two months later, I was sick of preparing pasta and cheese so I told the kids that I was going to do something else for dinner that night and was told “Well, it’s about time, Mom. We’ve had an awful lot of pasta and cheese lately.” Who knew?

Since my children are food fussy and I, like any mom, worry about what and how much they eat, food issues can add additional stress to traveling. One thing which helps is that we live in a fairly large city which has many, many nationalities represented in the restaurants available. We use these usually interesting, sometimes funky ethnic restaurants to try out new foods before we travel. Sometimes it’s a disaster – and we have to come home and cook for the kids – and sometimes it works like a dream. It’s never a waste of time since it gives me advance notice on whether or not food will be a problem when we’re at our planned destination.

Food is one of the best ways to experience and appreciate a new country. It makes me sad to see parents feeding their children pizza and chicken nuggets when they could be sampling local fare. Getting your children to try something new does take patience (which I’m not so good at) but sometimes it takes no more than a hungry child and a little encouragement to try the local ‘plain food’. When we visited Cyprus in 2007, CAM developed a taste for hummus and pita – out of necessity, because he was hungry and there wasn’t a scrap of peanut butter in sight. You have no idea how excited I was by this development.

Cafe Paloma (entrance on the right-hand side of the photo) with Smith Tower in the background.

It’s easy to forget that getting a child to try out new foods when you’re away from home also pays dividends when you return. On a recent Saturday afternoon, we took a wander around the Pioneer Square area in Seattle and decided to have lunch at Cafe Paloma, a Turkish restaurant which is a favorite of mine. I’ve eaten there many times – usually for lunch since I work nearby – but this was the first time we’d taken the kids there. It was a bit of a gamble since hungry kids are grumpy kids and we still had a 30-minute bus ride home.

Cafe Paloma was quiet when we entered and the staff welcomed us warmly. There was, of course, no “kid’s menu”. We ordered some hummus to start, lamb pitas for the WanderDad and I and a chicken pita for the boys to share. I requested that the chicken pita be served with all salad and dressings on the side and asked for two plates. My food fussy kids will eat chicken and warm bread any time but (vile) greenery on the chicken could cause them to refuse to eat.

When the food arrived, CAM and BigB polished the naked chicken pita with gusto. The salad and the yogurt sauce were, as predicted, totally ignored. (Our lamb pitas, sauce and all, were scrumptious). I’m pretty impressed with how our waitress had interpreted what I had asked for and then brought the boys a plate each on which half a chicken pita was beautifully presented. There’s not many $10-a-plate places where you will get that level of service.

I feel so good writing about this. It’s taken many, many trips and countless arguments over food both at home and abroad to get to a place where this kind of food experiment would go so smoothly. Over the coming year we’ll be experimenting with Asian cuisines (outside of spring rolls, chicken satay and fried rice) in the International District in preparation for our RTW trip. We tried Dim Sum in a Vietnamese restaurant earlier this year and my boys ate exactly nothing. It’s going to take a little more effort than getting them used to mediterranean foods, but I think we’re up for the challenge.

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monday dreaming of my camera

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Well, not my camera exactly, the WanderDad’s camera. It was a Christmas gift from me to him, and it was the only camera we had with us on our trip to Italy. But it was stolen.

Casio ZX-100

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about this camera. It’s a simple point-and-shoot, takes good photos, and is easy for even me (the non-gadget-geek in our household) to use.

The camera was stolen in Venice in June and I’m still mad about it. We had just spent five days in the city, relaxing and wandering, and generally getting to know our temporary home. Our kids were settling into the travel routine and becoming proficient in ordering their own food, drinks and gelatos in Italian. We had taken a ton of photos. This is unusual for us, we’re very in-the-moment people who are much more likely to bask in the sun watching our kids explore a piazza – just enjoying watching them play – than to even think about taking the camera out of it’s bag.

Perhaps a year before our trip, BigB had read Carnival By Candlelight and so, he was truly excited to visit Venice. I do think he thought he would see a flying lion. When we got to Venice, he was disappointed by the hustle of the vaporettos and the distinct lack of costumed characters in masks and flowing cloaks.

With a little digital photography magic, the WanderDad took a photo of him with the lion from Basilica San Marco in the background, making it appear as if they were standing side-by-side. And so began our photo journey through Venice. The kids posed and preened in all kinds of places. We avoided much of the usual tourist paths through the city and instead wandered around the neighborhoods, exploring and photographing as we went.

And then, the day before we left, we ate an early dinner in a little pizzeria just off Campo San Angelo. So early the pizzeria was practically empty. When we were done eating and had paid, we gathered up our things and left – leaving the camera bag behind. We realized the mistake within 30 minutes and rushed back to the pizzeria – which was no busier than when we had left it. But the camera was gone. I could rant for a moment about the probability that the camera was taken by our waiter and how dishonest it was for him to plainly lie when we returned asking if he’d seen the camera, but I won’t.

Instead, I’d like to take a moment to praise the Found Cameras and Orphan Pictures blog. Matt Preprost, the owner of this website, posts photos from found cameras and memory cards weekly on this site. You can search for your lost camera or photos using the location in which it might have been found. There’s an interview with him on how he came up with this idea on YouTube. It’s a great use of technology and the internet. Yes, it is like having a giant lost-and-found board, but it’s also an admirable way to reunite people and memories.

My request to you ? Spread the word. We’re not likely to ever be reunited with our Venice photos (since they haven’t shown up as yet), but knowing about this service can only make it better and that, may one day, help you or someone you love.

This post is part of the Monday Dreaming series by MotherOfAllTrips.

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Book Review: Rough Guide Rome DIRECTIONS

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Photo: Amazon.com

The WanderDad, the kids and I spent four fabulous days in Rome this past June. Going to Rome, showing my kids around and having them enjoy the Eternal City as much as I did the first time I visited there was an important goal for me as I planned this trip. The weather, unfortunately, was not really playing along with my plans. We sweltered in Venice and practically melted in Florence. The sun reflecting off the stone surfaces in the piazza with the famous gravity-challenged tower in Pisa meant we didn’t do much more than hit the gelato stands. I’d rather have stuck pins in my eyes than attempt to convince my children to venture up those 294 steps in that heat.

We deliberated about whether or not to visit Rome for almost two weeks. And then fate forced our hand – in the form of no available hotel rooms by the beach. We found ourselves on a late night train trundling through Tuscany on our way to the capital. My children were happy to be on the train again, back to bickering over whose turn it was to play with the Nintendo. I was stressing in the corner: worrying that if I couldn’t get the boys to engage and express an interest in the sights and attractions in Rome, our visit would be a disaster. WanderDad threw me an “honestly, woman” look and suggested that I give the boys a guidebook and let them choose what they wanted to do. Novel idea (pun intended).

As if on cue, the crescendo of bickering rose to a point where parental intervention was required and the Nintendo was confiscated. I waited for my moment, the first weighty sigh of boredom: “You’re bored. Oh dear. Hey, how about checking out this book, and picking out some things you’d like to see or do in Rome”. With that, I thrust the Rough Guide Rome DIRECTIONS into the hands of my older son. BigB took one look, pulled out his own book and buried himself in it. Score: Magical fiction with a young boy as the central character: 1; Guidebooks 0. (But then again, eight is a little young to really appreciate a good guidebook).

The RG DIRECTIONS series is a perfect guidebook for a tween:

Plenty of pictures.
Short, detailed text.
An Ideas section with top-5 lists to suit a wide variety of interests and activities.
City maps on the inner cover pages and neighborhood maps throughout the book.

CAM settled back in his seat and started flipping pages. The Ideas section caught his eye immediately. He started turning down page corners. Intriguingly, on some pages he made a 1/2 inch fold, on others a slightly larger fold and on others the whole page was folded in half. WanderDad poked me and threw me an “I told you so” look. Charming.

When CAM dropped the guidebook, I picked it up nonchalantly and in that “I don’t care, but I’ll die if you don’t tell me” way that moms can’t help but kids can spot a mile away, I asked: “So, bud, what do the turned down pages mean?” Naturally, the first response was a wearied rolling of eyes. “Jeez, Mom. The things I really want to see are the biggest folds, the things I’d like to see the medium folds, and the things I could, y’know, take or leave, the small folds”. Well, duh for me. Obvious when you put it like that.

And so, for the next four days, we organized our days around that little book and its folded pages, and we had a really enjoyable time. I used the neighborhood reviews in the book to come up with a day plan for each day. I made an executive decision to skip the museums and the churches: this was going to be an outdoors-only visit. We walked for miles exploring the neighborhoods with our trusty pocket-sized DIRECTIONS in hand (well, stuffed in my bag really). We ate at the restaurants marked on the neighborhood maps. We ate well and didn’t spend a fortune. In most of the restaurants in which we ate, we were the only tourists in sight which was a nice perk and one for which I recommend the Rough Guide very highly. The piece-de-resistance for my children was the Almost Corner Bookshop in the Trastevere neighborhood. The best selection of English-language kids books I’ve ever seen in any such bookstore. Again, we found it with the help of the little RG DIRECTIONS book.

My kids still talk about how much fun they had in Rome. I credit this guidebook with helping us to draw our children in and open up the city to them. We’re already talking about trips for 2009 and even 2010. There’s a variety of cities on our list. Here’s hoping that there are RG DIRECTIONS guidebooks available for all of them.

Click on the photo of the book at the top of the page to buy the book on Amazon.com.

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Hotel Review: Radisson SAS Rome

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I like Radisson SAS hotels. Maybe it’s the clean, sparse Scandinavian styling – almost as far away from my cluttered home as you could imagine. But, we didn’t plan to stay at the Radisson in Rome. It sort of happened by accident.

We left Lucca, having just spent a fun but busy week with family, and decided to chill at the beach for a couple of days. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see my kid’s faces as they explored the Colloseum, but it was hot, really hot and our attempt at sightseeing in Florence a couple of days earlier had been a disaster – because of the heat. Who expects temperatures over 90F in Italy in June, really? We took the train to Viareggio. Alas, we weren’t the only ones planning to hit the beach that weekend and there wasn’t a single hotel room to be had in the town. Where to now? Our kids were hot and sticky, sitting on their backpacks on a parking strip facing a beach, waiting for us to tell them it was OK to strip and dash into the water. But it was not to be.

We had wanted to leave the last few days at the end of our trip unplanned. I don’t think either of us had imagined this happening. Maybe Rome wouldn’t be so bad. I started reading the hotel listings in our guidebook. When I read that the Radisson had a pool, I flipped open my phone. Yes! They had a room available which would sleep four. The price was steeper than I would normally even consider, but this was a situation which required extraordinary measures.

What I liked about the hotel:
Location. Right next to the Termini Station. This might have been a problem except that its at the far end of the platforms, so the noise is not a problem. And you can walk across the street to get a Metro. Extremely handy if you’re a tourist trying to use only public transit.
Room Size. We stayed in a hotel in London last year with a pull-out sofa for the kids. When the sofa was out, you couldn’t actually walk between the bed and the sofa. Teeny. This room was positively American in size.
Cleanliness & Service. Scandinavian, duh! Well, with a slightly Italian twist.
The Pool. Turned out to be a full-size, unheated, roof-top pool. A perfect place to lounge about at the hottest part of the day.

What wasn’t so good:
Location. The area around the Termini Station can be a little seedy. We spent our time either by the hotel pool or out exploring some of the prettier neighborhoods of the city.
Frightening electrical work in the hotel room. When you pulled a plug out from a socket, sometimes the whole socket came too – leaving wires carrying 200v dangling out of the wall. Not the safest around children.
The showers in the gym were cold. Not that I was using the gym or anything, but our room had a bath but no shower. When we’d checked in, I’d been OK with a bath thinking to myself that I could just use the showers in the gym if I really felt I needed a shower. Three cold showers later I was not impressed.

Summary
We found it a good base from which to explore Rome especially since we had a limited amount of time. The mini-suite which we used (sleeps 4) costs about $450/night – we did get a slightly reduced rate since we were booking last-minute. Alternatively, we were offered two adjoining rooms for $300/night each. There was a complimentary breakfast buffet every morning. This went along way towards offsetting the cost of the hotel in my mind – two pre-teen boys can eat a LOT of food.
The real test: would I stay there again? Yes, I think I would. Although next time I think I’ll ask for a room with a shower

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A travel accessory every Mom should have…

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The KIVA Keychain backpack.
My older son is a packrat and a cool stuff, gadget geek. He found this in a local store and just loved the fact that a backpack-sized bag folded up so small.
I paid this particular purchase no attention until I was packing for our trip to Italy. Since we were backpacking, it seemed that it would be useful as a daypack.
Well, was that an understatement. We used it every day. For general daypack use (wallets, keys, camera, etc), for groceries, for loaning to my sister-in-law who had forgotten to bring a daypack and wanted to take her kids to Pisa for the day. General all-purpose, fit-in-your-pocket, glad-I-brought-it workhorse of a little bag.
The bag doesn’t have any padding on the straps and is very light, so I wouldn’t want to try to overfill it.
Especially useful for backpackers who need something a little smaller and lighter to use as a daypack.
Available at a long list of online retailers. Or check out the KIVA website to find a physical store nearest you.

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If you’re wondering where to go or what to do on your next trip…

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Then check out “A Year of Adventures” by Andrew Bain. This Lonely Planet book is a delight for any traveller who’s (temporarily) at home. The author takes a week-by-week, month-by-month approach to introducing fun, novel, exciting and sometimes challenging places to go and things to do worldwide. There’s definitely some things he mentions which I know I’ll never do (the Death Valley Ultra-marathon for example), but there’s plenty that I could do – most of which I wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t chanced on this book. Now I just have to figure out how and when to do them.

WanderMom

Inspiration for where to travel with children

Category Archives: Mom Talks Tech

traveling and kindle testing

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gift ideas for kids who travel

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introducing a destination to your child

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learning a language with professor toto

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kids food and travel

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monday dreaming of my camera

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Book Review: Rough Guide Rome DIRECTIONS

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Hotel Review: Radisson SAS Rome

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A travel accessory every Mom should have…

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If you’re wondering where to go or what to do on your next trip…

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