Helping with the dishes

Our dog was helping with the dishes.  (Of course it is easier when the little one drops the bowl on the floor from the high chair)

TotSpot

TotSpot is a site that wants to be the place where you share informartion about your kids, as they grow up, with family members.  You can share photos, journal, or milestones with family.  Also, TotSpot is trying to be the place where you can keep these record for your own purposes.  They will soon be adding the ability to order baby books that contain the information and photos that you have uploaded.  These could be some very nice books, assuming that you consistantly enter information for your kids.

TotSpot allows you to specify access controls for who can access the site that you have set up.  In addition to that access controls, you can see a log of who accesses your site.

[TechCrunch]

Simpler Family Life ideas

This blog post has some very good tips to make family life easier with kids.  I really like these suggestions:

1. Self-sufficiency


2. One Calendar


3. Quiet bedtime routines


4. Reduce Commitments

[via The Blogfathers]

The Kid's Song

Yesterday, I decided to listed to last.fm, which I haven't done in a while.  While listening, I heard The Kid's Song by Moxy Früvous.  This is a pretty fun song, that I think that the kids would like, and I don't mind.  I am going to check out the other songs on the album, to see if we want to get it.

http://xml.truveo.com/eb/i/2732558404/a/58ef677afb89fc040e3dec6de7dd6c26/p/1

Father/Son Wii

Our son has been having trouble focusing on his school work, while he is at school.  We are trying different tactics to encourage him to do his work at school, so he doesn't get behind his class. 

What is working now is that if he finishes his work at school, we can play 20 minutes of video games, while his sisters are taking their baths and getting ready for bed.

I think that he really enjoys this time with me. A couple of days ago, when I was pulling into the garage, he came downstairs and told me, before I even finished getting out of the care that "I finished all of my seat work at school!"

It is nice to see him excited about hanging out with his dad.

Shades of Black

Shades Of Black is a great children's book that our kids love.  We actually just bought another copy, since the first really started to show a lot of wear.

Volume control for toys

I think that there should be a requirement that any child's toy that produces sounds electronically should have volume controls.  You could say that it is to protect children's hearing, but in reality it is protect parental sanity.

Walking with Dinosaurs

Tonight, I took our son to Walking With Dinosaurs.  We had a blast.  I would recommend that anyone who has a child over 5 take them to see it.

Retail parenting?

This is a interesting article about how Target is not selling Manhunt 2, becuase it is possible for some one to modifiy some code (a config file I assume) and reburn the disk, and then be able to get access to some filtered content.

I don't know why Target is bothering with doing this. I will parent my kids, and don't need some store to do this for me.

Road Trip Games

This article has a list of 27 games to play with your kids while on road trips.  Our kids do like playing "I Spy".

[via Lifehacker]

Tags: roadtrip, games, kids

Wii for Families

This review of the Nintendo Wii talks about how well it is for families.  Our kids love playing the on the Wii.  Our son is getting very good with the bowling game in Wii Sports.  (I am going to have to get used that at some point soon he will be able to beat me in video games.)

San Jose Grand Prix

My father-in-law and I took the two older kids to the San Jose Grand Prix on Saturday.  We had a great time.  We saw one of the Champ Car qualifying races, and a Formula BMW race.

The thing that the kids liked watching the most was the Mini Grand Prix with the processional remote control race cars.

Time off

I have had the luxury to take this week off from work.  We didn't have any travel plans, and the two older kids had school, so I have spent the week with my wife and the little one.

I have enjoyed this time a lot.  Feeding and holding the little one, during the day is wonderful, in addition to just when she is going to sleep at night.  Also being able to spend time with my wife, without being interrupted by the kids has been incredible.

My wife has been great putting up with me being around and screwing up the usual schedule. :)

PetsWelcome

For the 4th of July, we took a trip to Sacramento with our dog.  Since this is a relatively short trip, there wasn't really a concern about finding pet friendly accommodations.  But, for longer road trips this is more of a challenge to find hotels along the way that are pet friendly.

PetsWelcome.com helps solve this problem.  They have a driving directions page where you can plan the route so pet friendly accommodations are within a certain distance of the route.

It would be cool if they also listed other pet friendly destinations, like outdoor cafes and dog parks.

[via Lifehacker]

Pachelbel's Canon for Parents

[via Left Coast Mom]

Cool kids bedroom

This is a pretty cool bedroom.  They separated the two beds from a bunk-bed and built a loft.  I am looking forward to doing something like this when the kids get older.

[via Daddy Types]

Potty-Training Anime

Our daughter has decided that she is ready to potty train.  Maybe she will like to see this hilarious video:

[via Strollerderby]

Cozi Central

Cozi Central looks like a pretty interesting site.  This site is targeted towards families to help organize schedules and communication.  Cozi Central reminds me of the next generation of the 3Com Audrey, which we had one of.

On Cozi Central you can see and edit the calendars for each family members.  This will help you find times to make appointments for multiple family members.  Also you can use the site to send messages to each other.  You can configure the messages to be sent through SMS or email.

Cozi also lets you share and manage shopping lists.  This in itself is not that interesting, but when you are away from your computer, you can have the list read to you or sent to you as a text message.

You can also sync these calendars with Outlook on Windows

World's worst Father's Day gifts

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that lists the worst gift ideas for Father's Day.  I do remember giving my dad bottles of Old Spice.  (I do need to call him later today.)

[via Strollerderby]

San Francisco Bay Family Activities

I always try to keep my eye out for activities that we can take the kids to on the weekend.  Sometime I forget the activities that I have seen, and end up doing a search while the kids are running around.

So I decided to add the activities to a calendar, to make it easy for me to remember.  I will add ativitites when I see them.

If anyone else is interested, I have shared the calendar.