As this summer approached, I wanted to do something similar. There was talk that the Incredible Family might be moving back east, and I thought it would be a nice idea to have some bonding time with the kids. So I booked accommodations on the Oregon Coast and made plans. Besides Violet (age 9 1/2) and Dash (age 8), I also planned to bring Jack-Jack, who is 3 1/2.

(My sister and brother-in-law asked me at least ten times, “Are you sure you want to bring Jack-Jack?”)

In the meantime, Grandpa Bob (or, as I call him, “Daddy”) was planning to come out from Miami, so he was added to the Camp Jean contingent. As was my brother, aka Uncle Bob.

We spent three nights in Twin Rocks at the Ocean Rogue Inn. It’s a great place to bring kids. The ocean is right there. They have a play structure, horseshoes, buckets and shovels. There are picnic tables and grills, too. We had the one unit with 3 bedrooms, kitchen and dining room (#7).

I took lots of video, and will edit that into something later this week. I took all of these photos with my iPhone.

Per Uncle Bob’s request, we visited the Tillamook Air Museum and saw lots of cool planes housed in a World War II blimp hangar, the largest wooden structure in the world. (photo from their website)

For the next two nights, we drove down to Newport so that we could make a visit to the amazing Oregon Coast Aquarium. This is where Keiko, the “Free Willy” whale, was housed before being returned to Iceland. The tank where Keiko lived has been turned into a walk-through aquarium featuring LOTS OF SHARKS and other fish. (photo from their website) You can also see otters, seals and sea lions (Jack-Jack’s favorite) in their outdoor ponds. The kids were fascinated with everything for at least an hour and a half, which I considered good!

We came back by way of Corvallis, which gave us an opportunity to visit with niece-equivalent Anne (that’s her photo at the top of this blog) who leaves today for a whole year (gasp!) in Thailand on a Rotary International exchange program.

We got back to Portland late Saturday afternoon. Grandpa Bob and I went in search of some at least moderately healthy food, and ended up at Old Wives Tales. I went to bed and slept soundly until 10 a.m., which is highly unusual for me.

I think Camp Jean was a success, although not as educational (and certainly not as healthy) as Camp Judy. Of course, it’s not a competition.

I’ve got a lot of ideas for next year, what works and what doesn’t work. I will post more specific tips and advice in a series of posts on traveling with the niece/nephews.

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 3 and up. I wouldn’t have wanted to take Jack-Jack any younger.

Duration of activity:Six days/five nights (and 6 hours and 53 minutes…)

Cost: Lodging: $803; Gas: about $70; Food: about $350; Air Museum: $7 for kids (children under 6: free!); Oregon Coast Aquarium: $8.75 for kids (children under 3: free — I think the lady at the cash register was trying to give me the chance to say that Jack-Jack wasn’t 3 yet, but I can’t lie in front of the kids! I’d say he got $8.75 worth of entertainment, though.)

Child/aunt fun ratio: 60/40. It’s not always fun to ride herd on three kids of varying ages/interests/food dislikes/moods, but it was still a great trip. I was tempted to go for a 65/35 child/aunt fun ratio here, but on reflection, I’m sure there were definitely moments when the kids were not having fun either.

So I was curious to see how they would approach a program specifically targeted at children.

I put my testing panel (Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack) to work. They love trying out new software. Also, it was TV Turn-Off Week, and they may have been a little starved for any kind of screentime. My sister Peg (aka Elastigirl) said it would be OK if it was something educational.

Doozla is a drawing program with four options: freehand drawing, coloring pages, backgrounds you can draw on, and webcam snapshots for drawing. The choices are presented in a very clean and simple way. Violet and Dash (who are 9 and 8 years old) had no problem navigating to what they wanted to do. They played a bit with the coloring pages, but found them too easy. What really sparked their interest was the webcam option. Provided you have a built-in camera, Doozla will snap a photo which you can then decorate with the drawing tools.

Jack-Jack, who is 3 1/2 years old, was more interested in the coloring pages and backgrounds, but he doesn’t have the mousing ability to actually use the tools. At first, I was disappointed, because I thought it would be so much fun for him. But then I realized that he found it very entertaining to watch me do the coloring according to his instructions. (His personality has become a bit imperious of late…) We also took a web cam shot, and I colored him in as I prompted him, “What color do you want your eyes to be? Do you want a blue beard? etc.” So Doozla will keep a toddler entertained, with the caveat that you might have to be part of the entertainment.

The tools are very easy to use and there are a lot of fun elements, as befits a product from plasq. When you click on a tool or a color, a little voice says the name with a kind of squeal that is hilarious. We clicked numerous times on “bright yellow” just to hear it. I really like that they’ve included semi-transparent colors, which makes it more fun to draw on the web cam pictures. There’s a control panel so you can prevent kids from printing (boy, would that cost you a lot of ink!) or quitting without you entering a password.

By default, Doozla opens in full-screen mode, which means that kids would not be able to move out of Doozla and into, say, an internet browser. A password could prevent them from quitting the program, so in theory you wouldn’t have to worry about them using other programs or accessing other files. But the full-screen mode can be toggled on and off without a password, which would circumvent that protection. An option to prevent kids from leaving full-screen mode would be a great enhancement.

The little ones, like Jack-Jack, are going to need your help anyway, so its unlikely that you’d be leaving them alone. A 4- or 5-year-old could probably entertain themselves with Doozla. At first I thought the older kids would not be interested, but the next time I came by the house, Violet showed me several more drawings she’d made in the meantime. It’s fascinating to watch her learn the program, and then learn its limitations. She started thinking of things she’d like to do, like patterns and copying, that are beyond Doozla. I’m going to get her copy of Photoshop Elements soon. I think she and Dash are ready for the challenge.

Doozla is a great introduction to computer use for the toddler/preschool set. They’ll learn basic drawing concepts (color selection, line tool, paintbucket, etc) and develop mousing skills in an easy and fun virtual environment. And with a developer like plasq, you can be sure that it will be interesting to watch this software evolve from its v.1 state.

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 3-7; older kids will play with it, but not for long

Duration of activity: 30 minutes

Cost: $24.95 (Download and buy at plasq’s site.)

Child/aunt fun ratio: 60/40. It was fun to color in Jack-Jack’s web cam photo.

Because I decided to go with Comcast instead of Qwest for my phone and internet service, I needed a way to save those recordings. But I didn’t know how. I tried using a little microphone to record while playing the messages on speakerphone, but the quality was not great.

Luckily, I mentioned what I was trying to do on Twitter (a kind of micro-blogging community where you can keep up with friends and colleagues via 140-character posts). MurphyMac, who publishes lots of interesting screencast on his blog, suggested trying Audio Hijack Pro (software that can record audio streams from any source on your computer; you can also use WireTap Studio) and Skype (the internet telephone service).

It worked. It’s very easy to sign up for a Skype account. It’s free to call another Skype user, computer-to-computer. But if you want to use it to call a telephone, which I needed to do in order to access my voice mail box, you need to buy Skype credits, which are very inexpensive. Once you call into your voice mail box, you let the recordings place while the software picks up the audio and saves it as an MP3 file. I highly recommend MurphyMac’s screencast tutorial.

It’s actually shocking to think that I trusted Qwest not to lose those messages all these years.

I compiled all the voice mail recordings and sent them to the respective parents–if I wanted to make a nice gift, I would have burned them to a CD and designed some nice packaging with DiscLabel.

Here are links to the MP3. They open in QuickTime on the Mac. I’m trying to figure out how to embed them so that they will play on the PC.

Violet, age 2, singing Happy Birthday:
http://www.thefavoriteaunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/violet.mp3

Emily, age 9, looking for help with a homework assignment:
http://www.thefavoriteaunt.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/emily.mp3

I decided to get everyone’s presents at Powell’s Books, our local book mecca. I did a surgical strike, going in on Tuesday morning and only giving myself 35 minutes on the parking meter.

Here’s how I did:

Jack-Jack: Bob: And 6 More Christmas Stories by Sandra Boynton

Jack-Jack just turned 3 in November, and I bought him a couple of books that he really liked. One was another book by Sandra Boynton, The Going-To-Bed Book. The “Bob” book seemed like a good one because a) Jack-Jack has an Uncle Bob and a Grandpa Bob, and he might even be about to “read” the title; and b) this board book has cute tabs down the side for each of the 7 stories, and I think that’s just fun.

Dash: Peanuts Treasury

I have fond memories of the hours I spent reading the Peanuts Treasury. Dash has gotten to be a very good reader. (His vocabulary has grown as well: he uses the word “precisely” all the time now, which cracks me up.) The language of “Peanuts” is sophisticated, which is good exposure for a young reader. Kids will not get all the nuances of the humor (I remember wondering what the heck is a “Van Gogh” and why does Snoopy have one in his doghouse) but there is plenty that they will relate to.

Violet: Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

I got Violet the first book in the series, “Peter and the Starcatchers”. It’s a very imaginative prequel to Peter Pan. The book is beautifully designed as well–nice compact trim size, gorgeous jacket, great illustrations. I met Ridley Pearson a couple years ago at the Portland Wordstock event (it was my volunteer job to shuttle him from/to the airport) and he really impressed me. He gave a reading and he was mobbed with young readers.

I’m also getting 10 crisp $1 bills for both Violet and Dash so they can put them in their new 3-part Moonjar banks, part of the Preschool Money Manager from The Tessy & Tab Reading Club. Now that they have the banks, it makes it kind of fun to give them money to divide up between the Spend, Save and Share sections of the bank. I think the recommended percentage is 70/20/10. So they should be able to figure out the math on $10.

Charlotte: Alphabet Rubber Stamps from Cavallini & Co.

Charlotte’s almost 12, and lives with her parents (my best friends from college) in Seattle. She is artistic and likes words, being an avid reader and a talented writer. I found a cool, kinda retro rubber stamp set with all the letters of the alphabet by Cavallini & Co. I would have fun playing with that, and I think she would too. They have some other cool-looking stamp sets (Paris! Butterflies!) but no e-commerce on their website, which seems bizarre in this day and age. Glad I found them at Powell’s.

I also bought a cookbook for my sister and brother-in-law: Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. They have been having organic vegetables delivered weekly by Pioneer Organics, and so they are always on the lookout for new vegetable recipes.

Today I realized that I still needed to have some little gifts for Emily and Anne. Emily’s in Portland right now, on college break, and we are driving up to Seattle together (of course, I will be doing all the driving), and her sister Anne is coming up from Corvallis, where she lives with her dad, to ride with us. I’ll drop them off at their mom’s house, outside of Seattle.

I headed to one of my favorite stores in the neighborhood, New Renaissance Bookshop. Besides books and DVDs on a wide range of spiritual practices, they have a lot of nice gifts: teas, essential oils, crystals, candles, chimes, etc. I found Matcha (Green Tea) Natural Eye & Face Masks which looked like it would be fun for the girls. I usually avoid giving people “things” that will take up space and need to be dusted, stored and eventually decluttered. I like the idea of this product, which they can enjoy and use up. It comes from a company called Muddy H20, located in nearby Vancouver, Washington.

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As I mentioned, I’ll be heading up to Seattle for the Christmas holiday, and spending Christmas Eve with Charlotte and her parents, after spending a night with Emily and Anne and their mom. My sister Peg and her family are headed back east to spend time with her in-laws. I hope you are getting to spend time with the kids in your lives this holiday — and that they don’t drive you too crazy.

Or vice versa.

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December 26 | Update

It’s the day after Christmas, so I thought I should follow up with a report on how the gifts were received.

Jack-Jack unwrapped his book and exclaimed “Bob the Reindeer!” We all stared at him, open-mouthed: had he actually learned how to read that at age 3? Then Peg figured it out: “Do they have that book at your school?” Apparently they do. Which surprises me, because his previous Montessori school did not approve of books with animals that wear clothes and talk.

Dash and Violet were a little underwhelmed with their books. At least Dash didn’t say “That’s not a very cool present,” which he did say when I brought him an Empire State Building pencil sharpener from NYC. (At which point, Uncle Bob told him the entire story of King Kong to convince him that the Empire State Building really is cool.)

Dash and Violet were thrilled with the ten $1 bills though.

Charlotte did like her stamp set. I guess I will have to get my own…

Anne and Emily really liked the green tea mud masks. But mainly they were just grateful that I was able to fit their many big suitcases into my VW Beetle for the trip to their mom’s. I guess that’s one of the things you learn as you get more experience traveling: just because you CAN fit something into your suitcase(s) doesn’t mean you SHOULD pack it.

From his website: “Once the lead singer of celebrated roots rock band The Del Fuegos, Zanes has found his calling creating truly age-desegregated folk music.” I love that term – “age-desegregated”. Like the Violet’s Faves CDs that I’ve made with my niece, it’s music that grown-ups can also really enjoy.

Go check out Dan Zanes’ music and videos on iTunes. I dare you to watch “House Party Time” without smiling. At $1.99, it’s cheaper than Prozac. (BTW, Uncle Bob “hearts” the keyboard player!)

You can also catch his tour. I would suggest finding a niece or a nephew to bring along so it’s not so obvious that you have a crush on Dan Zanes too…

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Shushing was probably the biggest revelation to me, and the one that has worked the best. Babies in utero hear the sound of blood rushing through their mother’s circulatory system. They calm down when you “Shh” them–but not in a librarian sort of way. It has to be a really loud “SHHHH”.

One of my favorite bloggers, Merlin Mann of 43Folders, just became a dad. He mentioned in a Twitter post that running the vacuum cleaner was the “nuclear option” in his battle with the baby crying. I think the vacuum cleaner replicates the “Shh” factor that Dr. Karp recommends.

I suggested a more economical and environmentally-friendly approach: a vacuum cleaner CD. Yes, such a thing exists at Pure White Noise. For $13.45 (including shipping), you can get “Baby’s Vacuum Cleaner CD” with a full-hour of vacuuming.

(This doubles as a Noisy Neighbor Hack: I bought “Calming Electric Fan” for myself when a new neighbor with a loud stereo moved in–it works great!)

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