Welcome!

If a bunch of my friends jumped off a cliff, would I want to jump too? Evidently, the answer is yes, as here I am starting a blog of my own....and really, truly, I'm only doing it because so many of my friends have done it. I'm not exactly overwhelmed with free time, and I didn't even have a purpose in mind when I decided that I absolutely MUST have a blog. But once I decided a blog was a must, there was no turning back.

My brilliant husband helped me to determine the focus of my blog: my reviews of kiddie culture. Music, books, TV shows, movies, maybe even toys and games.....I will share my experiences, reflections, and opinions on my favorites and not-so-favorites. I will attempt to turn readers on to the "cool" stuff that is out there for our kids - the music and books that we can truly enjoy with our children. These treasures really do exist, but they can be hard to find out there amidst so much crap that is being marketed to us and to our kids.

Even before our first son was born, I knew there was good TV and music out there for kids. In our childless days, we would channel surf over to Nickelodeon on Friday nights to catch "Prometheus and Bob," an amazingly hilarious claymation cartoon; and we were fairly aware of some of the great kids' music that was being produced in the late 1990's. By the time we became parents, REM had already appeared on Sesame Street, and artists like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen had made it cool to be a contributing artist on children's compilation albums. But it was not until after our son was born in early 2000, and we became active consumers of kiddie culture, that we learned how much garbage we would have to wade through to find the good stuff.

Stick with me, and I will lead you there. I may not be on the front edge when it comes to the newest releases, I may review some albums that came out two years ago or some books that have been around since the 1990's, but I will promise to keep it interesting. I'll talk about the Captain Underpants books, the new Martha Stewart Baby album (can you guess if I like it?), They Might Be Giants, and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends in upcoming posts. I hope to get my hands on the new album called Mary Had a Little Amp soon, and I will share some thoughts on why it took Generation X becoming parents to turn kiddie culture cool. Lastly, I welcome suggestions. If you know of something cool for kids, let me know!