I grew up in a brownstone in Brooklyn NY.  What does this have to do with reading?  Well, brownstones were built back when people had libraries in their homes.  Entire rooms with floor to ceiling shelving just begging to be filled with books.  Our library even had a billiard table in it that my parents promptly moved to the basement.  This room with its leaded glass bay window, mahogany paneling and built in cushioned benches was the epitome of an old fashioned home library (oh yeah, that’s also where our TV was lest you think the hours spent in there were only for serious bookworming.)  Fortunately my parents had a lot of books.  Real books not those weird fake ones that people fill their McMansion libraries with nowadays.  My dad had a collection of the classics with these blue spines and gold letters: Moby Dick, The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Scarlet Letter, etc.  We had both Shakespeare (from my dad’s high school days I suppose) and weird medical books because my dad is a doctor.  Shelf upon shelf was stocked with nonfiction like World of Our Fathers; a book I later realized is in every single Jewish home in America if your parents were born in the 30s and 40s, and fiction like the complete Sherlock Holmes.

That library was an endless source of discovery and joy.  I read books I had no business reading like when I was 10 and read Rabbit, Run.  I didn’t know what I was reading, but I liked it because I knew it was not meant for me.  I also found Isaac Asimov in those shelves and Charles Dickens – I still remember the fear and confusion upon reading Oliver Twist and seeing Fagin referred to as a “dirty Jew.”  All of those experiences of literary happenstance, of stumbling into a world just because I decided to pull that book off the shelf that day shaped both the writer and person I became.

I have no illusions about the gift of having all of those books at my fingertips.  I was lucky to have a parent who not only read a ton but also kept all those books.  And lucky to have parents who kept buying new books for us.  When I loved Oliver Twist I was allowed to buy every Dickens book I could get my hands on when we made our next pilgrimage to the Barnes and Noble on 19th Street in “the city.”  Same thing for the Brontes, and Jane Austen, Tolstoy and Judy Blume. (Though Wifey was not the Judy Blume book an 11 year old should be reading!)  Whenever a new author was discovered in the family library it more often than not led to the opening up of whole new literary obsession.

This is what I hate about the Kindle and ereaders in general.  I am not one of those technophobes who decries the rise of the ereader.  Hell, my husband even works for a company that makes one of the best ones around in my opinion.  No, I get it.  I understand the convenience, the speed, the greener side of things, but I don’t care.  I do not want Amazon’s recommendations.  I do not want to jump from link to link in the hope of finding something that sounds interesting.  And I certainly don’t want to see someone’s book club selection.  I want that sense of connection between me and the book; that little moment when a spine catches my eye and I slide the book out from between its shelf-mates, crack open the pages and begin to read with no expectations at all.

So ereader or no ereader I will always make sure to have mountains of books in my home, because even though my children have certainly inherited my love of reading, I want to make sure they experience the joy of stumbling upon a book you didn’t even know you were looking for and maybe, possibly falling into a whole new (old) world.

How do you choose your books?  Do you have a favorite childhood reading memory or a book that you discovered “by accident?”

This is an original beccarama.com post and is featured on this month’s Yahoo Motherboard!

Continue reading at nycmoms!

So, it was with a discerning city mom eye that I hit the Toy Fair.  I planned on visiting some booths for tried and true apartment favorites.  Melissa & Doug are top on that list.  In case you don’t know all about Melissa & Doug and their fabulous wooden, completely non-toxic and outstandingly well made toys let me start by saying this, Melissa & Doug made my daughters smart.  Well, maybe they didn’t make them smart (I’ll take credit for that and even share some with my husband) but Melissa & Doug helped us see how smart our daughters were.

When my girls were about 16 months old they didn’t have many words.  Maybe one or two, though they never stopped babbling.  “It’s because they’re twins,” everyone said, except our pediatrician who had twins and instead said, “get a speech evaluation.” But I digress…

One morning while in the holding area of a toddler gym waiting for our baby gym class to begin my daughters pulled out some peg puzzles from the cabinet.  They had never worked any puzzles before so I sat down and took the pieces out and showed them how to put one back.  They then proceeded to put all the pieces back together correctly in about 15 seconds.  No joke.   Soon our apartment was stacked miles high with puzzles.  They moved on to big jigsaw and floor puzzles and never looked back.  And it was all Melissa & Doug. (and yes they did start to talk and haven’t stopped ever since)

Going into the Melissa & Doug was like a trip down toddler memory lane.  The space puzzle!  The dogs!  The bugs!   We loved them all.  What are my favorite Melissa & Doug apartment friendly toys?  The small Kitchen.  LOVE IT.  Can’t do a whole kitchen in your place?  Get the awesomely real shopping cart and fill it with the wonderful play food. 

My go-to birthday present for girls age 4-6 has got to be the wooden magnetic dress up dolls.  The ballerina is always a big hit and comes in it’s own storage box.  A must.

How do you prep your kids for all of those IQ tests that NYC kindergartens require?  (yes, you are going to do this just admit it now) The wooden mosaic tiles of course.

And what are you going to take the playground this summer?  The new water and sand toys that are FABULOUS.  I’m not kidding.  I don’t usually care about one bucket versus another or any of that, but these are so special.  The soft bucket folds down to nothing, you can shove it in your bag or in the stroller basket.  The molds for making sand cupcakes are seriously cute and well made, and I loved the kid binoculars and magnifying glass for trips to the beach or park to help your curious kid be a nature scientist no matter where they live.

I could go on forever about the high quality, detailed dress up clothes, the basic wooden learning toys.  BUT, the thing I am MOST excited about it this amazingly cool kids ride-on carry on size suitcase called The TRUNKI!

You know what a pain it is to schlep your kid through the airport?  Especially if your child is now out of the stroller but still has loads of crap to carry on, or endlessly long security lines and walkways to the gate to get through?  This is nothing short of genius.  And it holds up to 200 pounds! 

I might buy one for myself and have my husband pull me through the airport as punishment for making me sit in the middle between my kids on the flight.  It’s coming out this Fall from Melissa & Doug, look for it.  I know I will be ordering 2.

By the way, my husband thinks this post sounds like a giant ad for Melissa & Doug so I guess I should mention that I in NO way received compensation for this post.  I really just love the company and these are the toys I wanted to share with my readers.  (though they did give me a small bucket of popcorn while I was in the booth!)

How did I become a PA mom?  Continue reading at nycmoms

ARE CITY PARENTS CRAZY?

Certain companies evoke the kid in me like no other and Playmobile is one of them.  I had the big fort/camping set when I was little.  I am endlessly fascinated by incredible attention to detail that Playmobile executes in all their toys, the quality of the pieces that can be handed down over and over again, and way in which their toys facilitate imaginative play.  What caught my eye at the fair was their new school.  First of all it has such a pleasing, colorful, happy feel.  This is the school your kids wish they attended.  The details abound – a skeleton figure and microscope in the science lab, a working abacus on top of the real chalkboard for doing math, a little child bathroom and a Principal’s desk with a coffee pot.  Details, always about the details.  I immediately wanted to pick up the pieces and start playing.  It’s also fully fashioned all the way around like all Playmobile toys so that you could really get a bunch of kids playing with this at once – something I’m always looking at as a mom of twins.

One of my other favorite things about Playmobile is how their attention to the little things makes them great teaching tools too.

When we had a family medical tragedy in our family many years ago someone suggested the Playmobile Hospital as a toy to help my very young niece and nephew learn about a hospital and the kinds of things they would encounter when they went their to visit their mom.  It took me a couple of hours to put together – perfection requires some hard work! – but it was a very accurate and engaging toy from the gurneys to the OR instruments to the doctors wearing surgical masks it covered many of the scary things they would see and made it maybe, possibly a little less intimidating.  At least it gave them an outlet to play out what they did see and try to make sense of it.

The school set comes out in August and I can see this being a toy that could help kids adjust to the idea of starting a new school and as a toy which helps them act out any anxiety they have about going to school, and the situations that arise once they start.

And, by the way, all of their pieces go in the top rack of the dishwasher, just throw them in one of those little baskets that you use for sippy cup inserts and bottle rings and nipples.

After Playmobile I headed to Madame Alexander.  My daughters have been to the Madame Alexander “factory” up in Harlem and are big doll fans.  I have to say out of all the press kits I came home with from Toy Fair, the Madame Alexander one is the one that they fought over, pored over, and has now found a permanent place on their bookshelf.  I don’t blame them.  But, I was never a doll collector.  While I appreciate the incredible artistry, design and quality of the special dolls, I liked something I could play with not just look at.  My daughters on the other hand are fairly obsessive collectors, of tons of things – rocks, shells, Webkinz, books in series, etc.  So they announced that when they turn 8 on their next birthday they would be mature enough for one of the “fancy” Madame Alexander dolls.  We’ll see.

In the meantime I was incredibly impressed and drawn to the huge array of play dolls that Madame Alexander currently has in their line up.  Wonderful soft versions of their collector dolls such as Rainbow Bright, Angelina Ballerina, Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious.  One of my absolute favorite items is a Wizard of Oz soft doll playset that comes with a Dorothy doll and then two other outfits that turn her into either the Good Witch or the Wicked Witch of the East.  I love a toy that does triple imagination duty.

The dolls I came home raving about however are the Madame Alexander 18″ Favorite Friends dolls that compete directly with the American Girl Just Like Me dolls.  These dolls have beautiful faces, are impeccably well made and most importantly, they retail for less than half the cost of an AG doll.  That means I could buy two dolls and an extra outfit for the price of one American Girl doll.  And like I said, as a mom of twins that is a serious draw.  As a personal preference, I also like the looks of these dolls more than the AG dolls because I for one always found those two front teeth that stick out on the AG dolls as pretty unattractive.  The only draw back of course is what my daughters pointed out – you can’t take the Madame Alexander doll to the hair salon at American Girl.  But, maybe they will get on this and create a partnership with Toy R Us to have doll salons in stores.  By the way Toys R Us, if you did this you’d bring a ton of girls into your stores!!!

In my next post I’ll talk about Melissa and Doug complete with a giveaway!   Stay tuned…

Thankfully, my daughters are almost eight years old so we are now in the drop off playdate stage.  These playdates have their own set of expectations.  I used to know what these rules were – give a snack to stave off any hunger related meltdowns, keep the playdate to an hour and a half maximum, and basically leave the girls alone with a bin full of Polly Pockets.  But, this year something changed.  This year everyone got a Wii.  And somehow, I have no idea when, the Wii went from a playdate taboo to a playdate must.

How do you feel about Wii playdates?  Keep reading at nycmoms!

Am I depriving my daughters of enjoying all of this once in a season snow extravaganza?  What about sledding in glorious Riverside Park you ask?

Well, that will probably be tomorrow’s after school activity.  (Please let there be school tomorrow!)

But today, while the snow is swirling and wind is howling, spending the afternoon in a warm music filled theater seems like the perfect way for a cold weather hating mom to spend a New York City snow day.

It’s a good thing the ipad is pretty because she’s certainly being mercilessly teased on the virtual playground.  I only wish she had had a girlfriend to protect her (and rename her) before they sent her out into the world.

It’s pretty funny that a gadget that has yet to come out has been praised as the second coming, declared the savior of the publishing world and then pretty much declared a let down by last night – all before it has been unveiled to the public.  But, Obama should take a page from the Apple hoopla and get back to the viral marketing and grass-roots web work that made his campaign successful.  He seems to have forgotten that young people and tech centered people are who created the energy around his initial campaign and they are just as passionate and interested in the world around them, just not necessarily the stodgy old world that Washington represents and of which Obama now seems entrenched.  There is nothing cool about Washington DC (that perceived coolness lasted about 6 months)

So, maybe the State of the Union Address can capitalize on the fervor of the Apple Tablet Announcement by refocusing our attention (and the government’s attention) on jobs (and Jobs – like Tom Friedman said) that are truly about the future – innovative, tech focused and creative.  About a year ago my Brother In-Law and my husband started a tech side business that included building an iphone app.  Where did they find the developers for this app?  In India, via elance.com.  They got incredibly top-notch development and execution of an iphone app for the price of one month’s rent on a typical Manhattan 1 bedroom apartment.  There should be no good reason why his job wasn’t bid on by some American college students looking to make a few thousand dollars and with the skills to turn it around successfully, but there weren’t.  That’s what we need to focus on, that’s the kind of job training and push we need in the schools because that is laying the long-term groundwork for the next generation of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, or just a team of people who can competitively bid on tech jobs from within our own country.

I’m not sure if the Apple Tablet will bring about the great change that everyone thinks it will – but it will most likely spur the next evolution in computing and technology.  Obama was supposed to do the same thing, only he forgot that change doesn’t just happen when the product launches, it takes an entire community to adopt it, engage with it and make it their own.  That’s what happened with the iphone and the app store.  Now Obama needs his own form of the app store to bring his change to life – that means opening up and listening to what’s out there, letting new ideas through and not letting people wedded to the past rule your decisions (remember all those people who said they could NEVER type on the iphone’s virtual keyboard?  They got over it pretty fast when they saw all the benefits of the iphone and app store.)  That State of the Union better lay out some serious apps for making this country better or his administration will end up like Windows Vista – all hype, all promised change, and one big CRASH.

This is an original beccarama.com post.