When you give a 5-year old an iPhone…

She’ll ask for some games just like the ones on the phones of her friends’ parent’s.

She’ll play a game called “Smurfs' Village” and “accidently” buy $10 worth of Smurberries because her father just downloaded the game for her 10 minutes earlier.

After awhile she’ll ask for more Smurfberries so Smurfette can have a house to live in.

He’ll say “no” approximately fifty times and ask what happened to the other Smurfberries.

She’ll stop asking because she’s discovered Angry Birds. Then she’ll ask him to buy the Mighty Eagle that some kid told her about.

Her father will say “no” approximately fifty more times.

Then she’ll discover the phone’s camera and take about 2,000 pictures in roughly 30 minutes with a Polaroid app called “Shake-it Photo” primarily because she has to shake the pictures to see them.

Her father finds them entertaining, chooses a few to post, and attach titles to them.

“The Day the World was Photographed after I bought $10 Worth of Smurfberries”

"Victims of the housing crisis"

"Excessive Neighbor Girl"

"School Reform Bear"

"Stinky Blanket"

"Angry Elephant waiting for iPad 2"

Then the 5-year old went to bed, but before she lays her hear down she'll ask her father to harvest her Smurfs' village potatoes while she's asleep.

When Do You Take A Toddler To The Movies? My iPhone Experience, And Parents That Buy Kids Expensive Things.

On summer Fridays, the J.O.B. let’s me free at 1pm. “Summer hours” they call I; the wife and I call it “A chance to go see a movie while our daughter is at the sitter until 5:30.” The last real movie we saw together in a theater was that Harry Potter movie (the one that came out 2 years ago.) Although I did try to take my daughter to see “Meet The Robinson’s” a few weeks (or months) ago only to have her tell me “all done daddy – I want home! I wanna play!” 20 minutes into it. To be honest I wanted to leave too, that movie was really boring and didn’t make sense.
So last Friday, the wife and I wanted to see Ratatouille and we were really struggling whether or not to take our daughter. Her current movie watching record is about 25 minutes of Cinderella, then she’s off to pretend cook lemon-crusted pork chops with rice, or sing to the dog.
Fellow parents, when did you first take your to the movies? 3? 4? 13? I lost my child owners manual and I want to know.
The first movie I can remember was E.T. at a drive-in. I remember watching for awhile and then somehow, I ended up at the swings eating a Fudgesicle. I wish more drive-ins were around these days... parenting would be so much easier.
My quick review of Ratatouille – I really liked it (so did the wife.) In my Pixar favorites, this is #2 after Finding Nemo. The story is great, the animation and art direction are stunning. It makes the Shrek movies look like “Dude, Where’s My Car.”

That was my Friday afternoon, guess where I was Friday night? Standing in line with about 600 people in front of me waiting to get an iPhone at the Apple store in the Sherman Oaks mall (and I thought nobody would be there because it was the valley – boy, I felt pretty dumb.) Two and a half hours later, I finally made it to the front (about 10 minutes before they sold out), bought the thing and then the Apple employees high-fived me on the way out while hooting and hollering “Whoo-Hoo! All right! Way to Go! You da' MAN!” (they were high-fiving everybody… I guess to make you forget the amount of money you just spent...)
I went along with it. Then when I got to the car, I felt dirty.

I didn’t have any problems porting my number from Verizon, I was able to start making calls from the iPhone in about 2 hours, and started receiving calls on Sunday. I played with the thing all weekend like a kid with Pokemon on a new Gameboy.
I have to admit – the thing is freakin’ cool. It really feels more like a computer than a phone though, which isn’t so bad. I do have a few complaints, which are more techie problems (Why can’t I get any notes on it from my computer like my Treo? AT&T EDGE is really, really slow. The WiFi helps when strangers have open routers. I want games on the thing and I want to use my music for ringtones.) I hear all of those are suppose to happen sometime soon in a software update.
Good things? The maps (and real-time traffic), the Internet works really well (full access to Blogger), the camera is pretty good for a phone, video looks amazing, oh - and the phone part works pretty good too.
The oddest thing while standing in line - there was a mom and her 11 year-old son ahead of me. The mom was buying one for her son. Say what? What kind of parent would buy an 11 year-old a $600 phone!? I sure wouldn’t. What’s wrong with parents? No wonder kids live at home well into their 30’s. I bet that kid will be living at home until he’s at least 40.

A Weekend In Central California Is Like Visiting A Whole Other Country - And My iPhone Countdown

Some things about California still amaze me; you can literally drive anywhere and in about an hour feel as if you’re in a completely different place. Here in L.A. drive east and you hit the “Inland Empire” (Nascar and big truck country), northeast (desert and UFO watchers), south (where frat guys and sorority chicks live when they have babies), north (mountains and ski resorts), southeast (real indians, casino’s, and “premium” factory outlets.)
We drove about 3 hours up the coast and spent the weekend in a small town called Cayucos. A coastal place among open rolling hills, mountains, and the ocean that has only about 3,000 people that live there (probably equal to about 3 blocks of my neighborhood.)
The main street looks like the one in that movie “Cars” – you know where the main highway bypasses the downtown, except this place wasn’t a ghost town. They have some pretty nice locally owned B&B’s, small motels, and pretty good restaurants. This one place called “Hobbe’s” had amazing food, a fancy outdoor patio with a butterfly garden (daughter loved that), and a snazzy wine bar (wife and I loved that.) Obviously the locals around the area eat and drink well.
For anybody ever visiting L.A. a drive up the coast between Santa Barbara and Monterey is a must. It amazes me how these small towns are still able to stay so small when L.A. and the bay area are crazy huge.

If we would have kept driving, we would have paid a visit to my new best friends in Cuppertino and begged for an iPhone now. I’m probably going to be one of those crazy people down at the Apple Store this Friday trying to get one. But only if the AT&T pricing plans for it aren’t ridiculous – because paying $90/month for a phone isn't sexy.

Anybody out there doing any summer weekend road trips with the kids? It sometimes seems like small vacation towns cater to retired people or couples without kids these days. It's always good to find those kid-friendly places that don't have amusement parks or miniature golf courses.