A Couple Things Worth Trying...

We're getting ready for some road trippin' this spring. We do not have a DVD player in our car, and I would like to avoid getting one for as long as possible. We do use our laptops sometimes in the car to let Isaac watch movies, but Isaac doesn't really seem to care for movies in the car too much.

Isaac does like being read to in the car though. The problem with that is I get car sick when I read while in motion (this happens to me on planes sometimes too), even while reading simple picture books. I came up with an idea though. What if I record myself reading the books ahead of time? Then I could play them back in the car for Isaac and not have to actually read while moving.

So I got out my little handheld tape recorder the other night and recorded myself reading aloud 4 story books. What I really like about using the hand held tape recorder is that we can use it to listen to the stories while we're in the car. This will be handy for two reasons:

1. We don't have a tape deck in our car (like most people these days)

2. I often sit in the back seat with Isaac on long road trips, which makes it difficult to mess with the radio up front.

We got a few books on tape from the library to listen to in the car as well. I'll let you know how this all goes over with Isaac...

Along those same lines, I also made a discovery of a cool new product this week. Well, actually, a friend told me about it. Hallmark has a line of recordable storybooks that they have come out with. I know the idea of audio books is nothing new, but what's so great about these books is that the audio device is built into the book. No CD or tape player necessary. You can record yourself reading the book, then lock the recording to protect it, and it will be saved in the book forever!

I think I'm going to try to bring one or two of these books to our Ethiopian kiddos when we travel for court and meet them for the first time. Then we can leave it with them and they can listen to our voices over and over again while they wait for us to travel again to bring them home. Granted, they won't understand what we're saying, but I'm pretty sure there are caregivers there that can translate. And even if they can't, I think it will be neat for them to hear our voices and look at the illustrations.