Are You Part of the Digital Nation?

Last year, a friend of mine sent me a link, saying "You guys should check out this episode of Frontline." It was a link to an episode titled Growing Up Online about how technology and the internet has radically changed the way kids learn, interact and live.  But me, watch an entire hour of video online?  I'm the YouTube generation, 3 minutes tops please.  He asked me a few more times if I watched it, saying that I really should for my kids' sake.  No time, too busy.

Earlier this month, Erin of the Manic Mommies sent me an invitation to attend a Frontline discussion of their Digital Nation project at WGBH.  Sure, that sounded cool.  A few days before the event, I thought about the link that my friend gave me and wondered if it had anything to do with this project.  After digging around a bit, I found that Growing Up Online was actually the precursor to Digital Nation, so I finally set aside a lunchtime to watch it.

When I finally watched Growing Up Online, it simply blew my mind.  It showed classrooms completely run through laptops.  Students submitted papers online so that teachers could easily run it through a plagiarism checker.  It showed a girl who had a secret "adult" identity on MySpace with a huge following.  She was completely crushed when she had to take everything down after her parents found out.  And then it showed a chilling story about a boy who committed suicide because of cyber-bullying.  This story really touched me because this boy was a beautiful, sensitive kid, so much like my own son.  If it could happen to him, it could happen to my child.

At the WGBH event, we watched a video clip about how the Digital Nation project came to be with producer and director, Rachel Dretzin:


(If you don't see the video, go there and click "Inside Digital Nation")

I actually watched this video clip prior to the event because I couldn't stop checking out all the cool clips at their site. Another thing that they invited us to do was to create our own video content to add to the conversation. The Digital Nation episode is an interactive work in progress and is scheduled to air in Winter 2010.  One thought that I came away with was succinctly tweeted by @KristenSB during the event, "#dig_nat we are the last generation who remembers a non-digital world. What of that past do we want to pass along to our children?"

Attending this event reminded me of how we need to carefully navigate the technological waters with our kids. Adam (age 8) loves all things gadget; he easily beats me at Nintendo DS and Wii games and he can spend hours on the computer. We haven't limited his "screen time" as long as he does all his other activities, including homework, reading, practicing piano, chores and soccer practices (and running around outside when we tell him to). This is probably blasphemy in other parent's books, but I know that computers will be a big part of his life, as it is a huge part of mine. I sometimes think that it is so cool that I sit in front of a computer creating software applications for a living.

The other night, I brought some work home and proceeded to edit a dialog.  Adam hopped into bed with me to watch.  I explained the behavior that I wanted to achieve.  When I press this button, I want it to stay down, become bold and disabled, while an adjacent button would come up enabled and have focus.  I added a few lines of code at a time, compiled and tested it.  For every change, he understood exactly what was going to happen.  I showed him that once I did one button, I could copy and paste the code to the other button and just change a few characters (software development is 95% detailed copy and paste skills).

It made complete sense to him and he said, "That's not so hard!"

"Oh no, don't tell my boss that it's so easy."

The next night I had my laptop in bed again, and he said, "Oh goody, work!"

"No way Mister, I'm blogging tonight!"  You gotta draw the line on such fun.

I remember thinking when Adam was a baby, that it would be so cool when he got old enough to type so then I could instant message him from work.  Now I'm thinking, how long can I hold off before he needs to IM his friends?  At this point, we restrict his internet access by using the free Kidzui browser, which limits browsing to parent-approved sites.  He spends his time playing silly games, as well as Webkinz and Club Penguin.  He's made virtual friends and we've had the "talk" about what is appropriate to chat with others.  Before long, he will be just like one of the kids featured in Growing Up Online.  At least I won't have to join facebook in order to friend him, as I will always be one step ahead on the Internet (I hope).

It was also great to catch up with other bloggers at the event, Christine Koh (Boston Mamas), Christy (More Than Mommy), and Kristin (Manic Mommies). I also finally met "Media Maven" C.C. Chapman (Accident Hash and the new Digital Dads), who took an awesome photo of me, and Laura Tomasetti (360 Days in a PR Life).  And a quick hello to Mommy Niri who I will get to chat with more at the BlogHer Boston-area get together on June 13.

The Story of Dova's Shoes

We have two weddings to attend this year, so I bought Dova a dress and shoes to go with it. Originally, I was thinking of getting a pair of white sandals with adjustable velcro straps for her wide (extra wide) feet. But then I saw these pretty dress shoes at Sears with little heels. I hauled her into the store to try them on. She couldn't fit her feet into most of the shoes, but she jammed her feet into these and said they fit fine (form over function with this girl). I figured with tights, she would probably be okay. After we drove down to Brooklyn for the first wedding last weekend, we barely had enough time to change in the car. Since it was an unusually warm day, we didn't bother putting her tights on. Here is the story of how the shoes went (with slightly embellished dialog).



Dova: Daddy, my feet hurt!

Dad: Well, you'll have to sit down and rest.

Adam: Tag, you're it!!

Dova: Adam!!!



Dova: Yay!! I love to run!! I can even run in heels!!

After this, I had to put two bandages on, one at the back of her heel and one on the top of her foot, which had skipped the blister stage and went right to bloody.



Dova: Mom, do we have to take pictures? My feet hurt!

Mom: You can sit in the grass while we wait for the photographer.



Dova: Mom, I can't walk. Can you carry me?

Mom: Of course, that's what Moms are for. You wait here while I go back to the car and get your Crocs.



Dova: See? I can be pretty in Crocs too!

Mom: You always look beautiful.

After getting home, we immediately set aside her grass-stained dress shoes for donation and bought her a pair of white sandals with velcro straps. She hates them and claims she won't wear them to the next wedding. Perhaps the Crocs (or rather the $5 imitations) will make another appearance at the next wedding. Already a slave to fashion!


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

WW - Wysiwyg got a bird

Even at 12 years of age, our cat Wysiwyg is still quite the hunter.  We did convince her to drop the bird and hopefully it got away for good.

Visit by Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom for more participants.

PSA - Is Your License Expired?

In an effort to save money, the almighty Commonwealth of Massachusetts has stopped sending out driver's license renewals, which are good for five years.  And with further cost-cutting, they also didn't bother telling people before it was too late. Personally, I think it is just another scheme to generate more revenue in tickets. I received a renewal for my vehicle registration last month and in the envelope, there was a little insert saying "Happy Birthday! Is your license up for renewal?" And in smaller print, "The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles will no longer mail out renewal notices."

Normally, I don't bother to look at inserts but thankfully, this one caught my eye. So I pulled out my license and sure enough it had been expired for three months! OK, so they did bother to tell me after the fact, but I would have no idea if I threw out that insert. I started telling people at work, and another person found their license expired in a few days.  Just today, I was stopped on the way to work.  The cop gave me a warning for having an expired inspection sticker.  Thank goodness, my license wasn't expired as well!  If it's not one thing, it's the other.  I have put a reminder in my calendar for both of these!

Mother's Day? Oh yeah, we went biking...

For some reason, I had totally forgotten what we had done on Mother's Day this year even with these beautiful photographs. Doug asked me what I wanted to do that day and I couldn't come up with any ideas. Going out to brunch with the kids was totally out of the question because it would be mobbed and the kids would undoubtedly misbehave. What I really wanted to do was catch up on blogging, but it was a beautiful day and we "should" go out and do something as a family. Doug suggested a family bike ride.  Outdoors?  Exercise?  I've become a total computer potato these last few months!

It did sound like a good idea so Doug loaded up all the bikes on the car for us (he definitely wins the best husband award ). Normally, it is an ordeal to get the kids to buy in on a family bike ride, but they were told - no whining on Mother's Day! We live very close to the scenic Nashua River Rail Trail and we set off. I kept my camera in my pocket as I pulled Dova in the trailer for the first half of the ride. There was a lot of huffing and puffing on my part because I was either really out of shape or Dova was getting way too big for the trailer. Thankfully, Doug took over the trailer after a while.  The biking suddenly got a whole lot easier and I finally pulled my camera out (perfectly fine to endanger my own life but not Dova's, although the real excuse was that I was working too hard just to keep up!). 



Adam did a fantastic job biking, in total we went 12 miles. He had a hard time keeping a steady speed though, and kept speeding up whenever one of us got too close and then slowing down because he got tired. I tried to tell him that it was just like on Wii Fit, you get a better score when running if you keep a steady pace.  Didn't really help his overly competitive mindset.



Dova slept for quite a ways in her cozy trailer with her Webkinz.



We rode by some green swampy areas.



Adam showed off his moves. Then I got the idea to point my camera backwards and shoot some pictures of Doug and the trailer.



I deleted lots of sky and ground shots, and the one shot that came out straight (with some coaching from Doug), was totally boring! My favorite is this extreme close-up.



I screamed in surprise when I saw this picture because I had no idea that Doug was so close (yes I chimp my photos even when I ride my bike).  Finally, we stopped near the Nashua river for some family photo ops.  It was at this point that I realized that the shutter over my camera lens was not closing properly.  My brand new camera!!  But we still captured these beautiful family moments at the end of our ride.







I was so disappointed that my camera was broken that I put it aside and forgot about the pictures. It wasn't until I packed it up to ship for warranty repair the next week that I took out the memory card and looked at the photos. I can't wait until it get back because I'm not about to haul my DSLR on our next bike ride!


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

What is that cool MP3 player that Adam has?

Adam tries out MY Sandisk slotRadio player. To enter to win YOUR very own slotRadio, visit my review and giveaway on contest bytes.

WW - Dova Slides with Style

Visit by Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom for more participants.

Silly Monkey Story - Dova Has Huge Feet

I was photographing Dova on the swing using wide angle, which makes her feet look huge!



Woah! That was way too close, she almost kicked my camera!



"Hahahaha!! I almost kicked your camera!!"*

*No cameras were harmed in the production of this Silly Monkey Story.


Hosted by Karen at 3 Garnets and 2 Sapphires.

PH - Painted

"Red bird with purple flower" by Dova, age 5.

No mommy blog is complete without proud paintings from their children! Actually, since I dislike having our children actually paint at home, these paintings are coming to an end as Dova enters public school next year. Sure, she'll have the occasional art project, but not the voluminous works that come home from her private preschool. The watercolor above was actually painted at home under the grandmas' supervision.

This is a rainbow she painted at school.  Her best friend is Roy G. Biv of course (except for the yellow).



And I will surely miss all the homemade cards with a painted handprint.




Hosted by tnchick.com.

PSF - Never Take a Half Day Off in the Morning

Last week, I found out that Dova's preschool class was hosting a Mother's Day brunch this Monday. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to take one of my mandatory days off and spend some quality time with my daughter. Since I needed to take a half day later in the month, I opted to take just the morning off. I could also have a nice quiet lunch with Doug before heading back to work, since both kids were in school that day. On Friday last week, our customer called to set up a teleconference as soon as possible. I suggested Monday at 2pm. He called back saying that not everyone could make it, and changed it to 1pm. Sure that would be fine...

I got to do all of Doug's stay-at-home chores on Monday morning, making lunches and driving the kids first to Adam's bus stop and then to Dova's preschool. We arrived a few minutes earlier than the start of the brunch at 9am, so I took Dova outside to join her class. I said, "Go ahead and play, I'll just watch from here." Mortified, she replied, "Mom, you have to go inside, there are no other moms here!" So I went inside and watched through door. Hmmph!

When the kids came inside, she finally allowed me to sit next to her during circle time because other moms had arrived. We then had a nice spread of cinnamon buns, mini donuts, cantaloupe, apple strudel with iced tea or juice. And here is a photo I took for iPhone bytes and Twitter:



Cute, eh? What you don't know is that I took three shots prior that all looked like this:



She kept scowling at me until I offered to get her another donut and then her smiles magically came out.  Later, I took this photo of Dova beading a necklace for me.  Again, she refused to look at the camera or smile but with the sunflower, it came out fine.



I got home around 10:15am.  Doug and I planned to take a walk together and then head out for lunch around 11am so we would have plenty of time. Except our network printer wasn't working. So I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out the problem, only to fix it by rebooting the printer. The gremlins have been hitting our network hard recently, and I've spent more time as network admin more than any other household chore! Finally we headed out for our walk and by the time we got back, it was around 11:45am. Now there wasn't enough time to head to a nice restaurant for lunch, so we decided to go to a local cafe.  We took two cars, so I could go directly to work afterward. When we arrived, we found they weren't open on Mondays so we headed to another cafe a couple blocks away. Since this place only had on street parking, we left my car and took one car over. Finally at 12:15pm we ordered a salad and a sandwich and sat at a beautiful cozy corner window table.



We got to chatting and before I knew it, I looked at a clock and it said 12:40pm. What? I gotta get to work right now! It would take 15 minutes to get there and then I would barely have enough time to turn on my computer to find out the teleconference information. And our food had not arrived yet! I assumed that this was a sandwich shop which could crank out orders in no more than five minutes tops. Apparently not, even Krusty Krab could do better. And I was just about to post this beautiful photo looking out the window but ran out of time.



I asked Doug to have them pack our lunches to go. We ran into his car, made an illegal U-turn, and drove to my car. I had the lunches in my lap. When I handed Doug his styrofoam box, I saw new grease stains on my favorite wrinkle-free Eddie Bauer khakis. Argh!!! I rushed to work, arriving at 12:58pm and the customer called just as I got to my desk. I had to eat while on the call in a conference room in front of another colleague. So much for a relaxing half day off.

So hopefully, time will erase the backstory of Dova's foul mood and the Main Street Cafe f-ups, and someday all I'll remember are these idyllic photos.  One thing is for sure, I will never take a half day off in the morning or go back to the Main Street Cafe.


Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

WW - Could our baby boy be up to our shoulders?

Could it possibly be that our eight-year-old son is as tall as our shoulders already? And yes, that is the infamous Corvette that left me stranded one day.

Visit by Wordless Wednesday or 5 Minutes for Mom for more participants.

Making the rounds

It's gonna be a busy week for me, but I've made some rounds with my blogging friends to tide you over.



Asianmommy.com graciously posted this interview of me. Through telepathy, she even put up a photograph of a Kawai piano, which is what I have.



Sandy at Momisodes also let me guest post while she was away on vacation.  And I blogged about a very important experiment involving cookes.



Be on the lookout for posts on BlogHer and great giveaways on contest bytes this week!

Happy Mother's Day

"My mommy is great at so many things, but what I love most of all is... 'to play on her D.S. with her!' - Dova".  I always expected that Adam would think that I'm the greatest mom because I play video games with him. But Dova? Is she turning into a geek too?

One thing that I noticed after becoming a mother is how quickly I am brought to to tears with any emotional story or music. I heard this song Happy Mother's Day by The Alice Project several years ago and it brought me to tears then and it still does every single time I listen to it. I am rarely over sentimental and I hate sappy movies, but this song speaks straight to my heart. You can listen to it by going to The Alice Project on the Podsafe Music Network and clicking on the play button. If you're a mother, please click over and listen!  Here are the lyrics:

Oh Baby you arrived today,
so tiny and perfect and squirming away.
And I hold you for the first time.
You're so amazing now what can I say
and we're tossing and turning and getting no sleep.
Rocking and rolling trying to get you to eat.
And I'm singing you love songs I'd forgotten for years.
I know its your day, but it's my day too...
Happy Mothers Day.

Come on in now it's getting dark.
Why? Cause I said so now don't be so smart.
Then you're on my back and I'm down on all fours
and we're laughing and singing and sharing the chores.
And there's heartaches and headaches and worries and pain
along with the dancing and splashing in the rain.
It's a lifetime that's a full one that I'd never trade.
If one thing is true, I simply love you
and This is Mother's Day.

Oh and even when you're all grown this love will be my own.
Through happy and sad, good times and bad.
Now it's my turn, to watch your life unfurl,
wind blowing through your golden curls.

I'm at your graduation, you're soon leaving home.
It's all that I hoped for, but I'm not ready at all.
And you smile and say "Thanks Mom" and I'm flooded with tears.
Feels like a day, not so many years
and I called up my Mother and cried on the phone.
Told her I'm sad and I feel so alone
and she listened a while said..."you now understand",
this is your day, what more can I say...
Happy Mothers Day.. I said yeah.."Happy Mother's Day"...

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

PH - In Memory

It must take a total geek to bring you "core memory" for this week's "In Memory" theme.  We went to the MIT Museum last year for the Cambridge Science Festival.  Here are some more photos and videos from our visit:


Adam held a fluorescent bulb near a tesla coil and it lit up.  I think he's smiling because it's like a real light saber.


Cloud by Arthur Ganson.

My favorite video of Arthur Ganson's work was the exploding chair (well worth the 15 seconds to watch!):


Doug liked the baby that followed the ball:


Adam liked the dueling red swords:


Dova liked the chair walking on the moon:


Hoped you enjoyed this total geek fest!


Hosted by tnchick.com.

Some Kids Like to Work, Some Like to Jump

A few weeks ago, we got together with our neighbor for our yearly bonfire to clear away fallen brush. We had quite a lot of tree damage from last winter's ice storm and had lots of branches to chop up and haul to the fire. Adam quickly jumped in to help Dad out, and I planned to spend some time with Dova. Don't worry, Adam was closely supervised at all times as the fire was really hot, hot, hot.

I got to test out my new camera's HD video mode:


But I quickly realized that it was too much work for the two guys alone, so I donned my work gloves and started chopping and hauling the brush. Dova wanted to help as well, so she put on her Dora the Explorer garden gloves. I asked her to stack the chopped up branches into the wheelbarrow. She lasted all of three sticks before she gave up. I guess she is five after all.



Finally, she took to jumping out of a nearby tree as we all worked. Adam worked right to the very end and only stopped short of popping open a beer with the guys while watching the fire burn out. But he did take a second to climb the tree. I guess he is eight after all.




Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek