I decided to host The Favorite Aunt my own blog at my domain: http://www.thefavoriteaunt.com.

So please come on over! Got a couple new posts on “Fun with Photo Booth”, new movie recommendations, and the story of how I poorly coped with my nephew dripping with blood.

Almost one year ago, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would release a phone in 2007. I was excited about it. I’d been planning to buy an iPod Video, so I could show off my little family movies. Now I could get a device that could not only show movies, but also make phone calls and manage my calendar.

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…

Last year, my brother (Uncle Bob) introduced us all to a DVD called Dan Zanes & Friends: All Around the Kitchen! Crazy Video and Concert Songs We watched it with the kids a kajillion times. And, I now confess, I’ve watched Dan Zanes even without the kids. He is that adorable.

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

When Jack-Jack was born, I learned of a fantastic book and video called The Happiest Baby on the Block by pediatrician Harvey Karp. It changed the way I approach the crying newborn problem. Dr. Karp talks about the five S’s: swaddling, side (or stomach) swinging, shushing, and sucking. In a nutshell, babies are happiest when the environment mimics their blissful life in the womb. Swaddled, held on their side, swung or jiggled, they feel more like they felt before that awful event known as birth.

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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aunts, babysitting, family, kids, babies

Violet and Dash love to pick out music for CDs. I learned this a few years back when I was hunting around for something to do with Violet that didn’t involve TV or video. I had my laptop with me, and I started playing tunes from iTunes for her. I started a playlist for her called “Violet’s Faves.” We chose 11 songs which I then burned to a CD. I designed a label for it and immediately became the most-played CD at my sister’s house.

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 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.)

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aunts, family, kids, music, babysitting, tech

“Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” – Voltaire

I registered the domain “thefavoriteaunt.com” well over a year ago. For at least a year before that, I starting thinking about creating a resource for aunts. As Voltaire said (more or less), “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Most writers suffer from this problem.

I finally decided that despite the fact that I had not…

a) decided on the perfect blogging setup
b) designed the perfect logo
c) figured out the perfect template

… I would just get started.

I’ve officially been an aunt for nine years now, although my first “unofficial” niece just turned 18. (Gasp! I told her there was no way she could be 18 now, as I have definitely not done 18 years worth of stuff since she was born…) Like many of my girlfriends, I’m an aunt but I’m not a mom. I don’t know how one would find the statistics, but I am sure there are more and more women, like me and many of my friends, who are progeny-free aunts. We have more time (and often more disposable income) to lavish on our niece/nephews. (I will definitely need to invent a gender neutral collective noun for a group of at least one niece and one nephew. Suggestions most welcome!)

What we don’t have are resources that tell us how to be a good aunt. Or, even better, how to be the favorite. I skim Parenting magazine in the doctor’s office for good tips on handling the niece/nephews, but the material there is not really relevant. Parenting (the activity, as well as the magazine) is about being the full-time (as in 24/7/365) adult in charge.

Aunts are not full-time. (And whether I am ever really in charge seems to open to debate with my nephew…) We can spend hours or days taking care of the niece/nephews, but we do get to hand them back to the parents and go back home to some peace and quiet. We have to be good role models, we need to enforce some degree of discipline, but not on a consistent regular basis.

To put it another way, when I’m being besieged with earnest requests for a visit to the gelato cafe before dinner, I can give in, thinking “Hey, I’m not the one who has the power to ruin them for life. Why should I have to spend the rest of the evening with grumpy children?” Like Bill Cosby, I believe that chocolate cake is good for breakfast.

I’d like to have some kind of handbook for aunts that tells me whether this is just really horrible and irresponsible. I guess I have to write my own. I am inspired by the motto of the podcast/blog Jumping Monkeys motto: “Pretend you know what you are doing.”

—

I suppose I should say something about this blog’s title. I have two wonderful sisters: one is the mom of the niece/nephews, and the other is, like me, a doting aunt. We are not in competition with each other. I mean, we got over that one-year-apart-sibling rivalry ages and ages ago. I just thought “The Favorite Aunt” had a nice ring to it. Really.

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aunts, family, kids