I recently read this book for my book club.? Being a Dan Brown fan, I didn?t expect to be disappointed; however, I did not expect to be sitting down to read for 2-3 hours in a sitting.? How did I do this with a 2 year old?? I was on a trip to Alaska for work and, after a 10-12 hour work day, didn?t do much else but try to relax.? I ended up staying awake much later than anticipated because I couldn?t put the book down!? I admit the first half was interesting but didn?t ?grab? me to the point of distraction.? However,?around the half way point,?this high action mystery/thriller started getting so intense and moving so fast that even when I finally forced myself to put the book down and turn out the light, I was not relaxed enough to go right to sleep!? Needless to say, I finished a 600+ page book in a week.? A very good read that I would highly recommend!

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I was in Toys-R-Us the other day and saw a woman with about a 5 month old looking at this drum.? I had forgotten what a long-lived toy this is!? I was given one as a gift when my son was quite young.? We began playing with it before he was 6 months old.? Besides having?fun, it starts teaching?as infant?the principle of cause and effect.? As he got older, it has become more and more of a learning tool while he is having a blast with his choice of playing music, imitating the drum beats that they play, numbers?or letters (there are four different settings the child can set it on).? He is now just over 2 ? and still plays with it quite frequently, sometimes singing along as well!? This toy is a definite for any mom!

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Ok, we are not sure if we like this idea or not. The thought of sitting a baby in front of a TV just scares the crap out of us. Yet, we all know whether it’s Teletubbies, Baby Einstein, or the latest on PBS…your baby as well as ours will likely be watching some TV. We just hope, that parents truly get it…you use the programs to interact with your child and not to baby sit your child.

The new, round-the-clock channel is called BabyFirstTV. For $9.99 a month, it will be available initially by satellite through DirecTV and later through cable TV providers as well.

TV offerings already abound for older toddlers, and a lucrative ? though controversial ? market has developed for baby-oriented videos, attracting the Walt Disney Co. and the makers of Sesame Street, among others. But until now there had been no ongoing TV programming aimed at infants.

“This is the first channel dedicated to babies and their parents ? transforming TV from its original purpose into a way for them to interact,” said Sharon Rechter, BabyFirstTV’s executive vice president for business development and marketing.

“The fact of life is that babies are already watching TV,” she said. “That’s why having BabyFirstTV is so important ? what we want to offer is completely safe, commercial-free and appropriate content.” KDKA.com.

With my wife still away on travel for work, my two-and-a-half year old son and I continue to turn our house into the bachelor pad we’ve always wanted. For our Friday movie night we decided to turn it up a notch. Pow! While the wife likes the cute and cuddly shows and fuzzy cute cats..we’re men and we sometimes need to watch shows that only men watch. So what did we watch? A movie about dogs. Not cute cuddly dogs either! No we watch on DVD a story about a BIG RED DOG!

Yep, that right. We watched Clifford’s Really Big Movie. Why is Clifford a real man’s dog? Well while he may like his family, and he may like his friends…there is only one thing that he really needs to make him happy. As long as he has a nice big bowl of Tummy Yummies he’s perfectly happy. Ahhh…finally a movie the boy and I can really get into!