Suburban Obsessions #32 -- Light Up the Night

Not too long ago, those nice people at Parent Bloggers Network sent me a SYLVANIA PalPODzzz portable nightlight to use and review.

It's a well-documented fact that The Ambassador is not a great sleeper and hasn't been since he was born. We co-slept for the first couple years, because that made him feel safe and it made a lot more sense to us adults than dragging our sleep-deprived selves up and down the hall 2,334 times a night. Even during those two years, we made copious use of nightlights.

Nightlights suck. It's really that simple. They're either dinky little things that don't provide enough light, or they're as bright as strobes, which isn't really conducive to good sleep. We have rechargeable flashlights in every room of the house, and they have a nightlight function, so we've used them for a long time and just tried to duck and cover all night long to avert our eyes from the white haze. (I've also been known to strategically place throw pillows in front of them to mitigate the glare that threatens to sear my retinas through my closed eyelids.)

When The Ambassador moved to his own bedroom last year, I went on a hunt for good nightlights and found one that generally works for us. It's bright enough to scare away the baddies, but the light is warm enough that it doesn't amp up a toddler whose capacity for sleep is still quite fragile.

As any parent can tell you, changing the slightest thing in a little one's room can throw off their whole world, so I admit that it was with some reluctance that I gave the SYLVANIA PalPODzzz portable nightlight a shot. What made me do it? First off, the thing is CUTE. The base puts out a soft, blue glow that is bright enough to illuminate a bedroom, but not so much that you want to strap duct tape over your eyes to fend off the light. The rocket ship (there's a lady bug version, too) is a rechargeable flashlight that can be removed from the base, and again, those Sylvania people nailed the brightness factor. The flashlight's light is neither too harsh nor too dim, and it's the perfect size for chubby little toddler hands. Given that The Ambassador loves all things space-related, the excitement over this nightlight was palpable from the minute it arrived. And that, my friends, was the only major problem.

That evening, with Hubby out of town, I thought the novelty of a new nightlight might make the bedtime experience easier for The Ambassador. He deduced right away that the rocket was removable, so instead of placing the nightlight on his nightstand next to the bed, I had to put it up on the dresser out of his reach so he wouldn't keep playing with it. He jabbered about it for a bit, and then finally went to sleep. I assumed his excitement would abate with a little time, but when he woke up in the middle of the night, he wanted to play with the flashlight. After a few minutes of bleary-eyed discussion, I had to remove the nightlight altogether to get him back to sleep.

The entire experience made me realize I'm an idiot. Rather than wait for a time when things were at their most normal (i.e., Hubby was home to do the usual bedtime routine) and leave the nightlight unplugged and in The Ambassador's room for a few days so he could get used to it being there, I opted to jump in with both feet and just put the light to the test. Sorry, Sylvania. My bad.

So we've taken a few steps back, and the nightlight is now hanging out on our kitchen counter, which gives The Ambassador ample access to the flashlight that he loves and gives us the ability to desensitize him a bit to its presence. My next move is to put the base in his room and use it as a nightlight, and when he's just a bit older (in a few months) we'll put the flashlight back in its slot for overnights.

Overall, the SYLVANIA PalPODzzz is a really cool product that I'd recommend highly, and I can't wait until it becomes a standard part of The Ambassador's bedroom decor, which is already done up in a space theme. But it's clearly not made for sleep-deprived parents who aren't clearly thinking through their bedtime routine. That's not you, right? That's just me. So pop on over to the Parent Bloggers Network blog and enter to win your own SYLVANIA PalPODzzz.

Sweet dreams!

Suburban Obsessions #29 -- Boogie SuperStar

The very cool folks at Electronic Arts sent us the latest version of their Wii karaoke game, Boogie SuperStar, and the Burbia family was pretty stoked to check it out.

To suggest that we are karaoke fans would be putting it mildly. While we don't get out to the bars all that often, Hubby and I have never been shy about embarrassing ourselves and our closest friends by putting our karaoke video games to good use at most of the parties we host.

After playing it, I have to say that of all the karaoke video games on the market right now, Boogie SuperStars is unquestionably one of the best. In this genre of games, it's pretty standard to pick your character and your song, and there are usually a few types of competitions from which to choose (head-to-head or multiple players). But Boogie SuperStars has definitely kicked it up a notch in every category:

- Customizing your SuperStar means head-to-toe customization, right on down to your shoes




- Making your sound your own means using some of the best and latest hits, including Natasha Bedingfield's Angel and Pocketful of Sunshine (one of Hubby's favorites)



- Then there's the element of the game that only a combination of EA and the Wii can provide. It's the kind of hip dance moves not seen since Kevin Federline performed with Britney Spears. Well, okay, maybe not that hip, especially since it was Hubby and I doing the dancing. But what makes Boogie SuperStar unique and particularly fun is that your score not only relies on your ability to sing, but you willingness to make a complete ass of yourself while attempting to simultaneously dance and sing. We had a blast trying to put it all together, and I can only imagine how much more fun this becomes when you've got four friends and a few glasses of wine added into the mix (we have a toddler and a regular babysitter, people. It's not like we're exposing adolescent children to booze-laden Boogie SuperStar parties)



The snarky judges make the entire experience very American-Idol-esque and totally worth the price of admission. This would be one of the hottest Christmas presents at your family party this year, so head to Amazon.com and pick up a copy.

Oh, and I can't convince you how much fun it is, maybe The Ambassador can:


The Ambassador Plays Boogie SuperStar from Missives Suburbia on Vimeo.

Suburban Obsessions #28 -- Meet the Sight Words

I know it's a parenting cliche, but The Ambassador is a sponge. He'll cruise for a couple months at a time, then experience a learning explosion that leaves me floored every day with the number of new things he's doing, saying or thinking. Naturally, we encourage him as much as possible. It's not a formal teaching process, but we incorporate learning into everyday experiences like telling stories, singing songs and doing crafts.

Over the past six months, The Ambassador has shown more interest in shapes and numbers, but recently, letters have begun to get interesting. So I was pretty excited when Parent Bloggers Network asked me to review "Meet the Sight Words". (A new video is always welcome in our house. It makes fingernail trimming so much easier.)

"Meet the Sight Words" teaches kids some of the most common "sight words" or "instant words" - the words that new readers often find frustrating until they're memorized, because they don't follow basic decoding rules. The 40-minute DVD covers some of the most frequently used sight words like "of", "said" and "for". Each word is shown on the screen by itself and then used in an animated scene while the word is repeated over and over.

While The Ambassador was initially interested in the DVD, I noticed his attention waning after the first couple of words and he wandered off to find crayons and do other things. The animation in "Meet the Sight Words" is fairly slow, and he's used to following shows with a little more action and dialog like Blue's Clues, so that might have been part of the issue. But as I watched him closely, I think he simply might not be ready for it. While the age range on the DVD is 15 months to six years, and The Ambassador is now two, I don't think he's fully engaged enough in reading and letters to watch the entire video yet. I briefly ran the DVD by a friend's daughter who is three, and she clapped and repeated every word on the screen.

I'm going to try "Meet the Sight Words" again in a few weeks and see how The Ambassador does with it then. In the meantime, I think he'll love Preschool Prep's other videos, "Meet the Letters" and "Meet the Numbers", so I'm going to order those and add them to our collection. I suspect they'll be closer to his development level, and I'll let you know how they fare!

If you think your budding reader would enjoy "Meet the Sight Words" or any of Preschool Prep's other titles, you can order them here, along with books and other learning tools that compliment the DVDs.

Oh, and hey! If you're new to Suburban Obsessions, come check out my real blog at Missives From Suburbia.

Suburban Obsessions #26

Hey! You made it! Once again, thanks for rolling over here to check out the product reviews. As I mentioned over on Missives, the kind and stunningly attractive* folks at Parent Bloggers Network have graciously offered to let me check out My Fruit Roll-Ups for free. They're going to let you do the same, so once you're done reading, go back to the giveaway post on Missives, leave me a comment, and at the end of this week, I'll pick a winner** at random, and they'll receive their very own case of My Fruit Roll-Ups.

First, I have to say how much I like the idea of personalized anything. Especially when you have a child who's going through a bit of a "mine, mine, mine" stage. Sometimes he's right, and things really are his, and personalization makes those moments easy to identify. Anyway, personalizing cool treats like Fruit Roll-Ups makes for fun party favors, and with The Ambassador's second birthday just around the corner, making My Fruit Roll-Ups would be a great gift for goodie bags.

My order of My Fruit Roll-Ups won't actually arrive at my house for another couple weeks, so I can't give you any kind of a review on the final product until then, but the design process itself is generally a breeze. You arrive at their homepage and are immediately greeted into the Invention Center.




It's an easy-to-use interface that lets you pick the message and picture you want to use on your My Fruit Roll-Ups. It's so simple that even I could use it, and I suspect a four-year-old would whiz right through it. You can order your design immediately or save it for later. You can pick from a variety of themes, including sports, animals, and licensed characters. There are hundreds of options, so set aside a little time to go through them or find the nearest four-year-old. We chose a "Look Who's 2" design for The Ambassador:



The process only takes about five or 10 minutes, and the finished product looks pretty cool. A box of My Fruit Roll-Ups contains 30 individual Roll-Ups, so they make a great favor for birthdays, graduation, holidays and presidential primaries. Right now, the site is featuring a special for $8 off a box, but if you head back over to Missives right now, you can drop me a comment and win a free box of your very own.

In the mean time, I'll wait patiently by my mailbox for my order to arrive, and when they get here, I'll let you know how they look. More important, I'll let you know if they pass The Ambassador's taste test. He currently favors another brand, so we'll do a side-by-side, blindfolded taste test. Ever blindfolded a 22-month-old? Should be fun.

By the way, let me just say that writing product reviews is a lot easier at night, when your kiddo is asleep and not screaming for new markers and wanting to wear his sunglasses inside (which, of course, only you can put on him correctly). Next time, I promise the link from Missives will go live and it will actually lead to a post over here at Obsessions. Still working out the kinks, people.





*I've never seen them in person, but I'm sure they're lovely.

**Just a not-so-subtle reminder that winners only reside in the U.S. I mean, you have to be a U.S. resident to be a winner. I mean... Oh, you know what I mean.

Welcome

For anyone who has been reading my main blog, Missives From Suburbia, you've probably run across my Suburban Obsessions feature. In fact, you may have tried DIORSHOW mascara because of one of my recommendations or, heaven help your thighs, Oreo Cakesters as a result of one of my posts.

In the months since launching my blog, I've received over a million* requests to review products. For the most part, I've turned down those offers, because in writing a blog I consider to authentic to my personality, it felt disingenuous to blog about products I don't use or have never tried. And to be perfectly honest, no one was offering to give me free products or pay me to write lies, so to hell with 'em.

But that's all changed. The kind folks at Parent Bloggers Network have invited me to test-run a few things, and so I've kicked off a separate blog solely for the purpose of talking about the things I love (and don't). As always, some of my obsessions will be of my own making, but some of them will be products people have tossed my way and I've taken a real-life look at in my own home. Personally, I think these people are incredible brave, because who knows what I'll say, right? But I suppose that's the risk they're willing to take.

You might be thinking, "Oh, jeez. First she started running ads. Now she's reviewing products. It's blatant commercialism! She's sold out!" And you'd be right. It's not like being a stay-at-home-mom is keeping me in Christian Louboutins. A girl's gotta earn her own way at some point, even if that means bowing at the feet of Corporate America. What are you whining about? I'll tell you if the stuff is crap! I might even give away some of it for free. Oh, sure... now you're paying attention, right? Right.

So stick around. It could be fun.

*Well, maybe seven or eight.

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