Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I hope you’re having a great and loving day with all your big and little loves!

This year is the first year that I actually “got” my children something for Valentine’s day!

Usually I just do cards and little love notes all over the place, heart shaped sandwiches and some love/heart type of dessert.

But this year I wanted to do one of those Hallmark Recordable Books for each of them. I just love the idea that they can hear me read to them even when I’m not there, or when they wake up at night or when they need a bit of extra comfort, or or or

And even though Max can read perfectly fine for himself, it’s still different when Mommy or Mommy’s voice does it!

So I got them a book each. “Guess how much I love you” for Anna and “All the ways I love you” for Max.

 

 

They were rather pricey and I was kind of shocked, but I had my heart set on it, so I went for it anyway.

The recording went fine, even though I find that the volume is a little high and you can’t adjust it. Even speaking quietly, produces a pretty loud end result. But ok, it’s not like my kids mind loud things It’s probably just a little loud by Mommy’s standards.

 

Anyway, so this morning they got their books … and they absolutely LOVED them. Well they loved the idea once they got to a page that would actually play it back to them.

 

Seriously guys, even though every single page played back to me perfectly well when I was recording the book, it just wouldn’t do it once the kids opened them.

I opened it for them, turned the pages this way and that way etc … Max thought that maybe one had to push on the page to make it work, Anna kept on pressing the buttons (disabled by the lock position) etc and hardly anything would work. So I thought it was the batteries. Changed all 6 batteries – no change!

 

LONG story short … I figured out that the book works on light sensors. And apparently it needs a fair bit of light to figure out that it’s supposed to play something. A dimly lit room at 6 AM isn’t going to do it! At least not unless you sit right beside that bedside lamp and hold the book half under it.

 

I was recording them during the daytime – in front of a window, ergo, bright light … instant great playback. *sigh*

 

So, dear Hallmark, don’t you think it would be helpful if that was stated somewhere? It never even occurred to me that light sensors would be involved!

It does somewhat defeat the purpose for us, because the last thing I want the children to do in the middle of the night, is to get up, turn on every light in the room, so they can hear mommy’s voice read them a story to go back to sleep. Yeah, that’s going to work really well!

The kids love it, so it’s not an entire waste of money, but I feel like I got duped somehow, especially for the price! It’s not like they need a mechanical device to have a story read during the day time while everyone is awake!

I guess it may be different when an absent parent or grandparent reads the book, then it doesn’t matter so much if it’s day or night, but for my intended purpose … not so much!

I don’t entirely remember the commercials for these books, but don’t they show kids at bedtime too? I would hazard a guess that the chances of both of our books, from two different stores, being defective are pretty slim!

 

I still love the idea of those books though … not so much the execution in our case!

Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know of  our experiences there!

 

Now I better get back to the kitchen! I’m making greek Moussaka for dinner …  the real from-scratch kind that is totally to-die for, even though a little work intensive! And then I think I’ll make some Valentine’s day brownies as a treat for dessert!

Have a great day everyone!