Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

I'll check it out. Thanks.

Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

I see them used all of the time in the city. Great alternative to using the stroller, which I find annoying.

Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

Ah. We just use double bagged brown paper bags from Trader Joe's. Or those things called arms. Or we make the little monsters crawl. It builds their immunity.

Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

That reminds of a poster from long ago, the one whose baby pic Fugee had as a screen saver. I think it was Skek Daddy. Is that him? Whatever happened to that hack?

Re: General discussion - Mom and Dad Esq.
 

Crap. Wrong thread.

Re: Backpack Child Carriers
 

We've got an REI frame backpack handed down from a friend, which I most recently used to schlep Freya around the Hoyt Arboretum. The important thing is to try it on. We had a hard time finding a pack that would fit both of us (I have wide hips and my husband has wide shoulders), and it was lucky that the free one did. I also can't recommend highly enough the Ergo carrier, which can be worn front or back with equal comfort. For not having a frame, it does a pretty good job of transferring weight to your hips. The only drawbacks are that the kid can't really see over your shoulders, and there is no outward-facing option. But it's a valuable tool to have in your baby-wearing arsenal (We also have a pouch sling, a ring sling, and a baby bjorn. Each has its place.).

tm

Book recommendations
 

I would like to get my son some books for the Generic Winter Gift Giving Celebration. Preferably chapter books out of a series, so that we could build a collection over time. He is in 2nd grade, but reads very well (according to his teacher, about 1 1/2 yrs ahead). The Magic Treehouse books he has taken home from the school library are too easy. He can plow through one in an evening. We have the Harry Potter books, and he loves them, but an 800 pg book is probably too much for him to tackle on his own. Anyone have ideas for something somewhere in the middle?

Re: Book recommendations
 

Do kids still read stuff like the Hardy Boys? I loved the Bobsey Twins, Nancy Drew, Little House on the Prairie, etc. when I was a kid, because there was always another book.

I also remember loving Encyclopedia Brown and the Ramona the Pest series for the same reason.

Note: I am old.

Re: Book recommendations
 

Yes. Gaplet the 9yo is going through the Hardy Boys stuff now and seems to like it.

ETA: I have not checked, but presume that he's not reading the actual ancient Hardy Boys manuscripts that you and I read back in the day, but instead more modern editions generated by an algorithm housed in a Google data center somewhere in Oregon.

Re: Book recommendations
 

I was a fan of The Great Brain series. And, as others have noted, Encyclopedia Brown is a fun series to read. Never read the Hardy Boys, believe it or not.

Re: Book recommendations
 

Second the question/request from the girl perspective; also 2nd grade and advanced reader. Major Harry Potter fanatic, and reads the books after I've read them to her (we're currently working through Order of the Phoenix). Like Paisley's kid, plows through Magic Treehouse and the like in an afternoon. Currently reading the Little House books, which we read together a couple of years ago. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Re: Book recommendations
 

How about Roald Dahl? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. James and the Giant Peach. The Twits.

Or The Phantom Tollbooth. Can't remember who wrote that gem, but it's delightful.

Re: Book recommendations
 

The Droon series engaged all of our kids at that age and would fit this bill.

Re: Book recommendations
 

All good choices. Boy or Girl involved?

If a girl, the royal diaries series engaged both of our girls, but not our boy. And has lots of good history in it.

Re: Book recommendations
 

We read the same books as kids. Save me a rocker at the old folks' home.

Re: Book recommendations
 

Those look great.

Thanks to all for the recommendations!

Re: Book recommendations
 

Penthouse forum?

Re: Book recommendations
 

that guy had more characters "exclaiming" than the entire other body of published works in the English language.

Re: Book recommendations
 

i knew you hadn't. if you had you'd know how to rein your wife in better, no offense. Frank was a dog, and Franklin W. Dixon went out of his way to pass on the lessons.

Re: Book recommendations
 

The baltspawn really like the Clementine books:

http://www.amazon.com/Clementine-Sar.../dp/0786838825

I still have to read them to my girls (not for long, though), but they are probably right in your 2nd grader's level -- about even with younger Judy Blume. Maybe not a challenge, but worth her time.

Re: Book recommendations
 

My third-grader recently read and really enjoyed the Hank Zipzer series by Henry Winkler. It has 14 volumes! Which means it's better than most other series. We recently finished Deathly Hallows (we read the whole thing aloud, starting a couple of years ago, and taking a sizable break after PoA).

Our current bedtime reading is A Series of Unfortunate Events, which not only has 13 volumes (yay!), is pretty clever to boot, with references and asides and clues to keep everyone on their toes. I just bought the two small Lemony Snicket Christmas books, one (about the coal) for Magnus and one (about the latke) for Thor's preschool teacher (we're not MOT, but he attends preschool at an orthodox synagogue).

I also am interested in recs for girls that age. My niece who's now 10 has a much greater appetite for fantasy (Artemis Fowl, etc.) than the one who's going on 8.

tm

Re: Book recommendations
 

Someone gave me an illustrated Canterbury Tales when I was a kid. The stories were dumbed down a little to an 8 to 10 reading level, but they were generally the same plots as whatever is in the Penguin translation. I LOVED that book. It wasn't, in my opinion as a kid, a boring classic to be studied in school, but a collection of really funny, really good stories.

It was this version.

The adapter also has done A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, The Odyssey, and Gilgamesh. The illustrator has done Don Quixote, The Iliad, and Favorite Tales of Shakespeare (which, based on the picture, I also had, but it's out of print.)

I also had D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, which I loved, loved, loved as a child.

Re: Book recommendations
 

Given who you are responding to, I think D'Aulaires Book of Norse Myths might be the better first choice.

Re: Book recommendations
 

Those Hank Zipzer books look great! And, speaking of Lemony Snicket, we (who happen to celebrate both Xmas and Hanukkah) have (and enjoy!), this really odd book - http://www.amazon.com/Latke-Who-Coul...9480778&sr=1-1

Re: Book recommendations
 

eta: Or I'll save you one. I may well be older. confused: But we'll look fabUless there, I am sure.

Re: General discussion - Mom and Dad Esq.
 

My sister gave me Camus' the Stranger when I was about 10 years old and after I read it I told her I didn't get the point.

Does anyone remember that kids western book "Chauncy and the Man" or something like that?

Re: General discussion - Mom and Dad Esq.
 

I remember the TV adaption, Chico and the Man. I mis Freddie Prinz, sr. [sniff]

a month late now, but what the hell
 

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

If Elf, one of the funniest Christmas movies out there, is to be believed, its the attitude behind snotty little missives like that that is killing the Christmas spirite. Not cool. Is Ariel your sock? I hope Ty@50 has the decency to apologise if it is......

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

All the children in my house still believe in Santa Claus. I am amazed, and every year I think it can't continue. Knock on wood....

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

Do they really believe, or have one or more of them figured out the angle? I suspect our almost 5yo of having figured it out, but keeping quiet b/c it means a gift he thinks he wouldn't get w/o the Santa angle.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

transltion: there is not a significant Jewish population in my kid's school.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

I think my seven year old has reached this stage as well. She is suspicious but afraid to say anything. She is especially suspicious that everytime she sees Santa, he looks different. Back in the day, I'd be lucky to see Santa once at the mall. Nowadays he's everywhere: at the mall, at the firestation, on the fire truck the Saturday before Christmas, at school, turning on the Christmas lights on main street). The kids aren't idiots. They're going to notice how he looks different every time. My wife blames it on how there are more and more "real beard" Santas who simply don't look at all like the "fake cottonball beard" Santas.

I have a few friends who are sick of the whole Santa deal (lying to the kids, not getting credit for buying all the gifts, wrapping the gifts in different wrapping paper, etc.) and have come close to spilling the beans just so they can move on.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

you gotta be fucking kidding. they sound nice.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

I would never kid you, Hank.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

Aren't these just "people who dress up to look like santa"? I suppose they've got you cooked if you told them it was "real santa" when you had the pics taken at the mall.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

Wouldn't jewish population make it easier to explain? "They're jewish and don't celebrate christmas, so of course santa doesn't visit them."

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

Some cling. Our 11 year old knows there is no Santa, but believes anyways. Just like Dad believes the Mets will win.

One day, when my daughter was 5, one of her friends informed her that there was no tooth fairy, and the money that the friend had found under her pillow was put there by her parents (call them Krishna and Arjuna). We were shocked - we'd never realized that Krishna and Arjuna were the tooth fairy. How did they fly into all those windows? Where did they hide their wings?

For the next year, our daughter believed that her friend's parents, late at night, went flying into children's windows leaving change under their pillows. She just wanted to keep believing.

Re: a month late now, but what the hell
 

Yeah, they're all Santa's "helpers", of course.