It’s always great to find something that the kids like and that you like watching too. Those old Monkees episodes really take me back. Smirk about The Monkees if you will, but in 1967, they outsold the Beatles and the Rolling Stones combined. My little girlfriends and I loved singing the main theme song: “Here we come… walking down the street…” wherever we went. Everyone had their favorite Monkee. As a kid, mine was Davy (like 95% of girls, and the show clearly pushes Davy Jones as a heart throb to the exclusion of the others.) Aunt Judy’s favorite was Peter–she always did favor the underappreciated!

A big point in favor of taking The Monkees on vacation: all three of the kids, from little Jack-Jack (3 1/2) to going-on-jaded Violet (almost 10) really enjoy them. The Monkee goofiness works on several levels. Watching them now, I realize The Monkee’s most lasting contribution to culture is as a precursor of… Scooby Doo, another favorite of the niece/nephews!

We watched a couple of episodes of The Monkees each night. They are short, they won’t cause bad dreams, and they have absolutely NO sexual innuendo! (Have you watched some of the shows aimed at kids lately? Sheesh…)

(The Monkees, Season 1, packaging is also cool: it’s designed to look like the old compact record players.)

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 3 and up.

Duration of activity:The episodes are about 20 minutes long. There’s no commercials, but the final credits run with big boxes of Corn Flakes and Apple Jacks plastered next to the boys’ faces. Old school!

Cost: $78 for the set on Amazon. Also available on eBay, for less in most cases. I paid around $45.

Child/aunt fun ratio: 45/55. What can I say? It’s fun for the kids, but it’s a little more fun for me. Depending on whether you love the Monkees, your ratio may vary.

Now, Court (bro-in-law) says I only come over to play Guitar Hero, rather than to visit the niece/nephews. Not true. I come over to play *with* the niece/nephews. Violet and Dash are both better than me. Jack-Jack is a little young for it.

For those who don’t know, Guitar Hero lets you “play” classic rock and heavy metal tunes as part of a rock band. You choose your avatar (see mine at the right) and you pick a song to play. The game comes with a guitar controller that is a kind of miniature plastic guitar with five buttons on the neck and one “string” button to “strum” on the body. As the song plays, a series of color dots appear on a guitar neck on the screen. You have to press the corresponding buttons on the guitar and “strum” the note at the same time in order to score points.

Warning: the first few times you try this game, you will suck. And when you suck, the audience starts booing. Try not to take it personally.

Once you make it through a song, you’ll earn some money for the gig. It’s fun to go to the store and pick out new guitars or outfits. My avatar now has a sweet all-purple leather outfit. I’ve also bought a new guitar, but new outfits are more satisfying. Nobody said Guitar Hero was about the music…

Before you go judging me for leading Violet and Dash into Nintendoland, let me just say that I have tried to turn it into an educational experience. Dash is taking guitar lessons now (on a real guitar with strings, not buttons) and he has a cool teacher who is teaching them guitar riffs from Jimi Hendrix and Cream. So I’ve downloaded those songs (Purple Haze and Sunshine of Your Love) on the iPhone and let him listen to the real thing. We’ve gone to YouTube to look for videos of Hendrix playing Purple Haze live.

My biggest complaint about Guitar Hero is the small number of songs by female rockers available. But I’ve used it as an opportunity to show Violet some old videos of Heart, whose Barracuda is one of the most fun songs to play in the game.

I’m almost done playing my “career” through the Easy level. All that’s left is a guitar battle, a kind of competitive contest against a computer character, to the tune of The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Dash and Violet are already on the Medium level, and I might have to accept the fact that they will always be better than me. Unless I get my own Wii…

[2/15/08 Update: I'm a rock goddess now. I had to wait until the kids went to bed though, so I didn't get heckled for all my failed attempts. And Medium level is going to be soooo hard for me.]

Aunt hack ratings:

Age group: 7 and up

Duration of activity: 30 minutes minimum; if you’re not careful you could play this for hours. I recommend against that–it doesn’t set a very good example.

Cost: Nintendo Wii: $250; Guitar Hero III: $90. Guitar Hero is also available for PC/Mac, so you wouldn’t need to buy the Wii, although from what I’ve read, the Wii is more responsive

Child/aunt fun ratio: 50/50. Until it’s bedtime, and then it’s 100% aunt fun.

1) Get more pictures taken with the niece/nephews

I don’t have enough photos of myself and the niece/nephews. Instead of wishing I had more from when they were younger, I’m going to make sure to take more now before they get any older. That means handing the camera to someone else once in a while, instead of just taking photos or video myself.

(Right: me and Violet when she was not yet one year old, I think…)

2) Find good healthy foods that the kids like

So often when I babysit the kids, dinner will be something from the freezer or the takeout window. I know one easy healthy food that they like: cucumbers, sliced up. They’ll eat those as if they were cookies. I need to figure out more meals that I like to cook and they like to eat.

To that end, I’ve put a couple books on hold at the library:

The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals

Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.

Sigh. I hate to be reduced to being sneaky or deceptive, but hopefully I’ll get some ideas for making good stuff that tastes good.

3) Find new music for the kids.

I’m ready to move beyond Dan Zanes. I’m ready to move beyond playlists of 1960s pop music. I want to discover some new artists that both the kids and I can listen to.

I’ve started with the Fids and Kamily Music Awards (yes, you read that right), which I discovered via Jumping Monkeys. Listen to Episode 24 of the podcast, when they announce the 2007 awards and play short samples from all the winners. That makes it easy to get an idea of which ones might interest you.

I’m going to start with My Green Kite by Peter Himmelman. He’s got a big bouncy hip sound and humorous, interesting lyrics. Like Dan Zanes, he started doing “grown-up” music before recording albums that are kid-friendly.

4) Spend more one-on-one time with Dash.

Dash will be 8 years old in March. I think I need to make an extra effort to spend more time with him. It’s so much easier for me to relate to Violet (9), girl-to-girl, or Jack-Jack (3), aunt-to-toddler. I’ve had sleepovers and playdates with those two, but the last time Dash had a sleepover, he was 4 (and Violet was included).

I grew up with sisters. We had a brother (Uncle Bob), but he was 7 years younger than me. I think I feel less confident with boys. Dash and I always get along fine, but I think one-on-one time really lets you get to know a kid.

I want to read Raising Cain: Protecting The Emotional Life of Boys, which I noticed at my sister’s house. Maybe that will help me get a clue about boys.

Any ideas to help me keep these resolutions? A book, a recipe, a CD that’s helped you?

Eeeek! Maybe, now that she’s 9 years old, she will not pick Care Bears II: The New Generation. Or My Little Pony: Flight to Cloud Castle. I have a hard time saying “no”. I want to be the open-minded, liberal and respectful aunt, so I hate to dictate what we can watch. (I’d rather just sneak into the video store and choose something on my own, so there’s no discussion!)

As we peruse the New Arrivals, my heart is sinking. Not only do I not see any appropriate movies, there are lots of icky ones with scary-looking covers. Then I remember hearing about “High School Musical.” I’ve always liked musicals, so I suggest it. Violet eagerly agrees.

It’s fun. The music is not bad, the story no more improbable than most movies, and some of the dance numbers are good. It’s clean cut. At a couple points, I found myself saying, “What? He’s not going to kiss her now?” Violet assures me that there’s in more kissing in High School Musical 2.

Watching cutie Zac Efron definitely takes me back to the days of my big crush on David Cassidy!

What I didn’t realize is that it would be the Ultimate Tool in the Aunt Toolkit.

Why Every Aunt Should Have the iPhone

1) Cartoons

I downloaded three episodes of Avatar: The Last Earthbender. The kids love this Nickleodeon show, and so do the grown-ups. It took me an episode or two to warm up to Avatar; the animation is pretty basic and on the surface, it seems kinda hokey. But stay with it: it’s actually pretty sophisticated–and funny. (I want my own ten-ton flying bison… Appa rocks!)

I bought the episodes on iTunes for me: I missed some shows and wanted to catch up. But luckily, I kept them on the iPhone for our family trip to the Virgin Islands. Long flights, missed connections, befuddled children. The death of the pacifier. Before they got too sad (or hysterical), I’d say, “How about an episode of Avatar?” Worked like a charm.

I know. The iPhone is a $600 gadget. (At least it was for me; now the price is down to $399.) Some may think: “You’d let a 7-year-old hold your $600 gadget?” Here’s the thing. The iPhone is surprisingly sturdy. It is difficult to scratch. It can be dropped from a low height. I got a great case for it that doubles as a little stand, perfect for airplane tray tables.

2) Photos

One night, while trying to encourage them into bed, I said, “If you get your teeth brushed and pajamas on, I’ll show you my photos from Crater Lake.” Instant cooperation. If you want to know how easy the iPhone interface is, Jack-Jack instantly figured out how to flip between photos. Of course, he was almost 3. A baby can navigate through iPhone photos as you can see on YouTube.

3) Music

The iPhone has a speaker. Last night, giving Jack-Jack a bath, I could play a Dan Zanes tune to mollify him after getting shampoo in his eyes.

Naturally, he asked: “Can I hold it?” I do let the kids hold the iPhone, as I said above. But absolutely not in the bathtub!

4) Weather

There is a surprising amount of kid entertainment value in the Weather widget. Violet and Dash take turns looking up the weather in cities around the world. Dash was overheard recently asking someone else if their phone could tell them the weather in other cities. “My aunt has an iPhone and we can do that.” (Yes! Racking up the cool aunt points!)

5) Camera

You can take photos with any camera, but with an iPhone, you can email them on the spot. To the other aunts, for example.

6) Games

You can get Bejeweled for the iPhone online. Dash loves this especially. It will distract him without engrossing him, the way a Nintendo Game Boy will.

7) Stock quotations

Just kidding. At least for now…

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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aunts, family, kids, music

Since then, I’ve done over 10 collections with Violet and Dash. (Jack-Jack is still a little young to sit still long enough to pick out a CD’s worth of songs.) It’s a great babysitting activity. It takes 30 minutes to an hour. They gain an appreciation for music and learn to identify artists they like. (Added bonus: it’s actually music that you like too!)

The most popular tunes are the ones that I liked when I was little, which is kinda cool, because it’s the music my parents played at our house. I often shop iTunes looking for faves from my childhood, so that I always have a selection of music for them to pick from. Here’s the playlist from “Violet’s Faves” to give you an idea:

1. Downtown – Petula Clark
2. Puff (The Magic Dragon) – Peter, Paul and Mary
3. Do You Know the Way to San Jose? – Dionne Warwick
4. I’ll Never Fall in Love Again – Dionne Warwick
5. Sugar, Sugar – Archies
6. To Sir With Love – Lulu
7. Brand New Key – Melanie
8. Georgie Girl – The Seekers
9. I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing – The Seekers
10. Old Fashioned Love Song – Three Dog Night
11. One Is The Loneliest Number – Three Dog Night

I used DiscLabel to create the label design. It’s Mac software, developed by the company I work for. It makes it very easy to create a design using your photos and an iTunes playlist. (If there are any good options for PC users, please share them in the comments.)

I love my Epson RX700, an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner that prints directly to CDs. (The latest models like the Epson 595 are half the price I paid!) Epson has printers like the Epson R260 that also do the direct-to CD printing and they are really inexpensive. I highly recommend this over using stick-on labels. The results are much cleaner, and you don’t have to worry about the label coming off. It’s kinda fun too: you slide a printable CD on a cartridge through a special slot in the printer. (Think classic Easy Bake Oven.)

Aunt hack ratings:
Age group: 6-13
Duration of activity: 30-60 minutes
Cost: blank CD and jewelcase: under $5; songs: $.99 on iTunes
Child/aunt fun ratio: 60/40

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aunts, family, kids, music, babysitting, tech