I Should Enjoy This While It Lasts, Right?

Sarah’s “big” Christmas present this year was her own iPod Nano, and a little clock/radio/dock that she could use to play it in her room. We had been having a lot of fun listening to songs in the car, taking turns picking songs, and she liked both being able to pick songs, and looking at the “pictures” (i.e. the album cover art) for each song, so it seem like it might be fun to get her a player of her own. Also, since the nano has the simple motion controls, and has the “cover flow” thing, she would be able to easily shuffle play the music, or use the cover art to pick songs, even though she’s not reading the song or artists names yet.

And, of course, Sarah is also big on listening to audiobooks in the car, so it seemed a good bet she might also use her player to listen to some stories in her bedroom. Again, the ability to select them by cover art would get us around that whole “read the menu” thing. This is the modern equivalent of young Chris obsessing over a stack of “read-along” 45s, and turning the page whenever Tinkerbelle rang her little bell.

So we got her a pink Nano, and I filled it with several hundred songs (some she had asked for in the car, that I knew she liked, and a some from my collection that I thought she might like) and a few audiobooks. The experiment has been an unqualified success, with Sarah loving the present and making lots of use of it. We were surprised by how much she made use of the audiobook feature, sometimes happy spending hours at a stretch in her room listening to stories and playing with her toys, but that’s cool.

She asked me a couple of nights ago to add some new songs for her (notably including “The Old Sod” by Spirits Of The West–“it’s good music for dancing, Dad”) and to find an audiobook of Gulliver’s Travels to put on for her (she had been reading it with her Mom–and I was able to find a Hugh Laurie narrated version for her).

While I was doing that, I took a moment to look at what songs she had been playing the most–I know what she had requested the most in the car, when we were using my iPod, but not what she had been listening to in her room. Looking at the list, I have decided to enjoy this display of good taste while it lasts, before the boy bands come for her.