Our family loves to use shutterfly.com. We find it really convenient for ordering pictures in a variety of formats including prints, postcards, holiday cards and albums. My wife very thoughtfully put together an album for my mother for her birthday. My mother is one of those people who will never tell you what she what she wants. She has always been a person who honestly thinks she does not deserve to have stuff. She always loves to get pictures of the kids though, particularly because she lives in Ohio and we do not. The album arrived the other day. My wife opened it to admire her handy work before wrapping it and to our surprise, the cover was ours, but the photos inside were of some family from Philadelphia. Immediate family fury ensued.
If you haven’t heard of Vanessa Van Petten and you are a parent of a teenager, you should. Vanessa has a site that explains to parents what their teens are u to, worry about, and need from you.
Here is a great example from her videos explaining why your kids are into social networking.
You finally named your kid. Hopefully you didn’t wait too long after the little bugger was born. Now what? Besides the usual, changing diapers, warming bottles, ogling your wife’s boobs, or ogling your wife’s boobs some more, you should think about the internet.
I’m not talking about surfing porn or watching funny youTube videos. I’m talking about staking claim in the new frontier of the internet on your kid’s behalf.
Kids love computers…and understandably so…they love them for the same reasons you do - they’re shiny, makes funny noises, have lots of blinking lights and let them do all kinds of cool things. If the computer hasn’t become central to your kids’ lives yet, it will soon.
And therein lies a dilemma for you:
You know that computers and kids can be a great combination. They can help make learning fun, encourage self-expression, facilitate problem solving and over a lifetime help overcome barriers to entry into the global workforce. You also know that any delicate (and often temperamental) technology and kids can be a recipe for disaster or at least an expensive service call to Geek Squad.
Computers - especially laptops - were not designed with kids in mind. You don’t want sticky hands all over your nice glossy 15.4 screen and unless you own a Panasonic Toughbook, you’re pretty sure it won’t fare well in an “unplanned drop test.”
So what to do? You either designate an older machine as theirs, hope for the best and patch it back together after an “incident” or nervously hover over yours like a news chopper over a high-speed chase - where it goes you go. Bummer that nobody makes a “kidputer.”
As some of you loyal Noodad readers know, I am also the Chief Blogger and Editor-in-Chief of iPhoneMatters.com . But even though I have been consumed by lust of this $600 device, owning it has not been the easiest thing in the world. The reason is simple: I may be a Apple fanboy and gadget lover, but the reality is I am also the father of three kids (2 toddlers and 1 baby).
This means that I have up to 6 miniature hands just waiting to rub snot, dirt, and god knows what else onto my new toy. That is why, as I have promised to all of you in the past, I will continue to deliver you with tips on fatherhood like this. Why Parenthood and iPhones Do Not Mix. Read the rest of this entry »
You have ventured into their turf. You have seen them armed with their words of smiting and clad in +19 armor of contempt. You may have attempted to engage them in battle only to learn of their tendency to combine together like red, blue, green, yellow and “I’ll-form-the-head” black lion into a Voltron-like presence capable of devastating even the most determined, logical and reasonable foes. Even before the battle rages, each of them waves their internet family crests in a glorious display of hypocrisy. You see, these (primarily) extremely righteous women who would gnaw a predator’s flesh down to the bone if they so much as laid an eyeball on their kids, are unwittingly tossing them into the middle of the (information super) highway.
Noodads, I am bringing this up because it could be your wife.
You’re at “Happy Feet” with your kid, mesmerized by the tap-dancing Mumbles and his soulful, singing brethren, when you hear a cell phone interrupt Gloria’s solo. You look around for the inconsiderate grown-up, wondering why an adult would choose Hannah Montana’s “If We Were a Movie” as a ring tone, when you see a girl about seven years old whip out a pink clamshell phone. She answers, and yaps away for a minute before closing the phone with a loud SNAP!
It seems that the average age of kids with cell phones is creeping downward, and these days it’s not uncommon to see kids in elementary school talking on a cell phone during the school bus ride home. “Yeah, Mom? I should be at the stop in about ten minutes. Can you have my snack ready? I’m inviting some friends over to play in my Webkins World room at 3:15 and I don’t want to be late.” Read the rest of this entry »
Your kid looks cute in their new spring outfit. But the odds are good that they will outgrow that outfit after only a few wears. So what do you do? If you have a large family, you pass it down the line so another kid gets a chance to wear it. But if you don”t have the extended family option, you need to get rid of it.
A good option, is to sell them and the best place to do that is eBay. After 1 month of selling clothes, I made over $400. If you take the time to do your research, plan out your process, and take good pictures, you can make some mad flow as well.
Here are a few hints and tips I have discovered when selling kid”s clothes on eBay:
The internet is the new frontier for this millenium. It is extremely important to put a stake in and claim your piece of internet real estate. Now imagine what it will be like for your kids when they are 10, 18, 21, 30 years old? Domain names are being snatched up, squated on and sold for big profits to multi-billion dollar corporations. And despite what people tell you, a .com is still better than any other suffix. So. I suggest once you choose a name, you purchase the domain of your child”s name ASAP. And while you are at it, reserve the AIM screen name, MySpace link, and anything else you can get your hands on.
Our family loves to use shutterfly.com. We find it really convenient for ordering pictures in a variety of formats including prints, postcards, holiday cards and albums. My wife very thoughtfully put together an album for my mother for her birthday. My mother is one of those people who will never tell you what she what she wants. She has always been a person who honestly thinks she does not deserve to have stuff. She always loves to get pictures of the kids though, particularly because she lives in Ohio and we do not. The album arrived the other day. My wife opened it to admire her handy work before wrapping it and to our surprise, the cover was ours, but the photos inside were of some family from Philadelphia. Immediate family fury ensued.
You finally named your kid. Hopefully you didn’t wait too long after the little bugger was born. Now what? Besides the usual, changing diapers, warming bottles, ogling your wife’s boobs, or ogling your wife’s boobs some more, you should think about the internet.
As some of you loyal Noodad readers know, I am also the Chief Blogger and Editor-in-Chief of 
You have ventured into their turf. You have seen them armed with their words of smiting and clad in +19 armor of contempt. You may have attempted to engage them in battle only to learn of their tendency to combine together like red, blue, green, yellow and “I’ll-form-the-head” black lion into a Voltron-like presence capable of devastating even the most determined, logical and reasonable foes. Even before the battle rages, each of them waves their internet family crests in a glorious display of hypocrisy. You see, these (primarily) extremely righteous women who would gnaw a predator’s flesh down to the bone if they so much as laid an eyeball on their kids, are unwittingly tossing them into the middle of the (information super) highway.
You’re at “Happy Feet” with your kid, mesmerized by the tap-dancing Mumbles and his soulful, singing brethren, when you hear a cell phone interrupt Gloria’s solo. You look around for the inconsiderate grown-up, wondering why an adult would choose Hannah Montana’s “If We Were a Movie” as a ring tone, when you see a girl about seven years old whip out a pink clamshell phone. She answers, and yaps away for a minute before closing the phone with a loud SNAP!
Your kid looks cute in their new spring outfit. But the odds are good that they will outgrow that outfit after only a few wears. So what do you do? If you have a large family, you pass it down the line so another kid gets a chance to wear it. But if you don”t have the extended family option, you need to get rid of it.
The internet is the new frontier for this millenium. It is extremely important to put a stake in and claim your piece of internet real estate. Now imagine what it will be like for your kids when they are 10, 18, 21, 30 years old? Domain names are being snatched up, squated on and sold for big profits to multi-billion dollar corporations. And despite what people tell you, a .com is still better than any other suffix. So. I suggest once you choose a name, you purchase the domain of your child”s name ASAP. And while you are at it, reserve the AIM screen name, MySpace link, and anything else you can get your hands on.
