Author: Scottish Mum

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My Kate Benjamin Black Leather Studded Duffel Bag – and a 20% Discount Code for Accessories Direct

I had a lovely offer through my e-mail recently.  Most offers from PR’s that I accept are centred around my children or gifts, but every so often, one comes along that I really can’t resist taking the opportunity to accept for myself.

I was given a document with an option to pick three items that I liked from in order of preference.   I made a quick decision that this campaign was tailored just for me (ok don’t burst my bubble) and eagerly returned my choices to the PR.

I opened my pack to the feel of a lovely designer dust bag covering whatever contents there were inside.  I was immediately impressed and impatient to see what lovely creation that I had been sent.   I had been sent the lovely Kate Benjamin Black Leather Studded Duffel Bag (opens link in new window) and I knew I was in heaven.

I was surprised to see that all three of my choices were from the Kate Benjamin range, so I must have been destined to receive one of her fabulous designs.

REVIEW

Now down to the nitty gritty that all bag lovers want to know.

I have to say I was delighted to receive my first choice from the sheet, and was able to really appreciate the bag.  The Kate Benjamin Black Leather Studded Duffel Bag retails for £175.00 and the attention to detail impresses.

The first thing that struck me was the wonderful smell that emanates from a new leather bag.   The bag is a mixture of suede and leather and with the most exquisite gilt buttons, hoops and fastenings.

Can you tell I am completely besotted by this bag?   Maybe this incredible feeling of elation at a lovely item is something that only an appreciator of bags can understand.  I know that my sister in law, who is a handbag connoisseur is going to be green with envy when she spots it.

Now for the picture of my real, actual bag with its dust bag.  I so love this.  I’ve shown the inside lining which has a lovely shade of  fuchsia and is beautifully finished throughout.

   

The body strap which is detachable makes it the prefect bag for me.  When I am shopping or out with the boys, I like to have my hands free to carry other things.

The outer bag is 100% Leather and the gorgeous Inner is 100% Cotton.  I can see I am going to get a lot of use out of this lovely, lovely piece of perfection.

Accessories Direct also have gorgeous jewellery, hats, purses, umbrellas, fascinators, slippers, gloves, wallets, scarves, gifts for all.  I actually love this Linden French Multi Striped Bunny Rabbit, and I wish we had someone in the family with a child young enough to give it to.

DISCOUNT FOR BLOG READERS

To go with my post reviewing this fabulous bag, Accessories Direct have allowed me to give my readers a huge 20% off non-sale items from the website.  All you have to do to get this discount is to enter this exclusive code when you buy.

“FESTIVE”

The discount code is valid until 9th December 2011 and I would recommend buying early to avoid the Christmas post rush.

And if you sneak over to their website (opens link in new window) you will see they also have a Facebook Promotion going for the 12 Days of Christmas which looks fabulous.

 

Disclaimer:  I was provided with the Kate Benjamin Black Leather Studded Duffel Bag by Accessories Direct to review.

 

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Just Dance Kids on the Wii & Giveaway

Just Dance Kids by Ubisoft came to us recently through a lovely contact who wanted us to try it out and review the Just Dance for Kids game.

The disc has lots of kids favourites – including :

  • Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
  • Hokey Cokey
  • The Lion Sleeps Tonight
  • Jingle Bells
  • Crocodile Rock
  • Shake Your Groove Thing
  • The Shimmie Shake
  • Intuition
  • Despicable Me
  • Positivity
  • Follow The Leader
And lots lots more.  All the songs are at Just Dance Kids on the website.

It just goes to show that sometimes, kids are never too old to enjoy something that they’ve been given.    Here they are with the Gummy Bear Song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F1cJNadpkQ

My boys had a lovely afternoon playing all the songs on the disc, and we had an afternoon with friends, and their cousins over who were all younger and were tickled pink to be able to dance about to the tunes.  I wish I could have videoed them all when they were doing it, but my boys happily went on before bedtime and I managed to sneak up behind them and get the videos.

They really enjoyed going back to some of childrens songs and singing along to the older ones they knew as well as some of the more recent ones. Littlest said it was good fun being a “kid” for the day.   When you dance to the tunes, you build up a score that means you can challenge your friends and family to see who gets the blue score and is the winner with the highest score.

The screen has a cool icon that means children can skip the song themselves if they want to change the routine, and don’t have to go back into complicated menus to find the next songs.  It’s a little touch that pre-school children who don’t yet read will enjoy as they can shuffle through the songs to please themselves and choose from singers like Michael Buble, the Wiggles, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez.

The children here mostly played three at at time – all lined up in a row, and all having an individual score.  The game also lets them play against each other in teams to see who comes out on top.   It’s a neat feature.

My boys are getting older and we have some more games on the way to review, so we have decided that someone else should get the benefit of this disc to have fun with over Christmas.  We certainly enjoyed it.

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If you’d like us to send you our review copy, just leave a comment with a way to contact you – and tell me which song you like best from the playlist and why.    The full playlist is on the website – and remember this is a copy that has been opened and used for a whole day.

Just Dance Kids

Disclaimer:  We were provided a copy of the Just Dance Kids Game for  the Wii to write this review.

 

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Sleep is for the Weak

Image: m_bartosch / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After reading  Jane’s blog yesterday at Northern Mummy with Southern Children about the 7pm bedtime routing beginning to change, I had to laugh as I saw it at about 10pm, while I was trying very hard to ignore the 2 reprobate children who were still wandering the house looking for snacks and drinks.

I can’t remember how or where it started to deteriorate.  The boys have never been good sleepers and one is up with the sun and goes to bed with the sun.  In summer, he sleeps for about 4 hours a night.

It was a very fast progression, this bedtime lark.

Within a few short months, peace and tranquility at night-time  had gone.  To clarify, in my humble estimation, peace and tranquility is only broken if more than one child spends upwards of an hour or more screaming their heads off at bed time.

The deterioration of the bedtime routine clashed with the onset of cot side climbing and big boy beds.  Overnight, the children constrained by cot sides found the freedom that they had longed for.  No longer were we able to keep them from moving.

In middlers case, the next step was to move a child gate to the door of his bedroom to give him that little extra room to manoeuvre, without being let loose on the world at a moments notice and without anyone watching his back.   I thought I was so clever with that little trick  and congratulated myself on my cleverness with smug smiles to all.

Smugness laughed in my face as within a week or two, middler had managed to learn to climb over the gate.   Red raw eyes over the next few weeks of staying awake and outside his door to stop him heading off in the middle of the night made me look as if I had a huge vino habit.

Smugness reappeared when I found a dog gate in Argos that looked the same as the child gate, only much taller, and the red-eyed eyed witch disappeared as sleep came back to the mum of the house.

All too soon, the returned smugness evaporated when he realised he could throw a wobbly, lob a huge kick in the direction of the gate and it would fly off the door in a testament to his strength and ability to grab the fleeting tastes of freedom that he had managed to acquire before.

Elder and littlest get tablets to help them sleep.  It must be something that runs in their birth family.  This permanently awake condition is totally alien to me.    I was the poster child for the long lie campaign as I only ever wanted to get up out of my cosy little pit when I had to.

To this day, I still need three alarm clocks set to get me up, yet the slightest whimper from a child usually wakes me (oxymoron I know).  I do say usually as I sometimes sleep through all madness with oblivion.   There are only so many waking hours that a sane person can survive on (who said I was sane).

My boys are fast approaching the teenage years, and with so little sleep in their lives so far, I can’t help but think that they are going to grow up into insomniac nightwalkers, destined to walk the streets at night.  My paranoia knows no bounds !!

I have long given up the fight for bedtime as it is impossible to make someone sleep if they don’t ever feel tired.    The tablets are wonderful when they work and if I catch the odd glimpse of a yawn, I take that as my excuse to race to kitchen, fill up a pint glass full of milk to help tip the almost sleeper over the edge with a full belly.

They say Margaret Thatcher only ever got 5 – 6 hours sleep a night and since she was dubbed the “iron lady,”  I guess that really means that sleep is for the weak, and the rest of us are chicken lily livered sleep loving bedaholics.

 

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What is wrong with a label?

What is in  a label?

If I had a £ for everyone who said that they didn’t want their child labelled, I’d be doing quite nicely by now thank you.   I have to wonder why we have such an aversion to labels, or names, or public affirmation of issues.   Many do accept the labels their children are tagged under, but for every one who does, there are many who don’t.

– Is it a Scottish thing?

– Is it a larger than life British thing?

– Is it one of those stiff upper lip Britishisms that has us refusing to admit that our children may “have” something.

– Might it be that we might be blamed for it if they do?

– Could it be that we are in denial and don’t want to admit there is something wrong with our children?

– Should it be that we ignore what is right in front of our eyes?

Isn’t a label a reason for people to call our children stupid, or thick, or spazzer, or idiot, or dumbo, or something else as equally offensive?

Perhaps denying that there is anything specifically wrong means that we don’t have to face the problems that are staring us straight in the face.  Keeping the denial going means that we can pretend we have the illusion of a perfect family can’t we?

– What if we use the label?

– What if other people learn about the condition that a child has been labelled with?

– What if the label teaches others patience.

– What if the label means that academics and medial staff have to take notice and provide some help.

What is so wrong with having a label?  I have endometriosis, I was infertile and I am a food addict.   I am not ashamed of any of those so why do I hide them in real life?

My children now have labels.  In my stupidity when they were younger, I remember hearing the most ridiculous words coming out of my mouth.   I would start by saying ” I know he has issues, but I don’t want him to go through life with a label.”

Nobody will fight our choices if we choose not to have, or to use the labels, but at what cost to our children?   Are the labels beneficial to them and are we really just digging our heads in the sand and hoping it will all work out alright in the end?

Why is it so wrong for so many to have their child come under a  label?

 

 

 

 

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Lightening Strikes with Wowee’s Light Strike Assault Strikers and Accessories

A fabulous offer which was perfectly timed for the birthday of the  littlest boy of the family.    Scottish Mum Blog jumped at the chance to take up Wowee Light Strike Product review and eldest did his first youtube bit – his nerves get less and less as the time goes on.

The box arrived a few days before his birthday, and as it came around 8pm at night, littlest sadly saw the huge box that ended up sitting in my garage for the few days.    There were all sorts of questions and guesses around what could be in such a big box and it was quite nice to see that he didn’t storm the garage in the dead of night to open the box.

Recommended for age 8 +, these are the products that my boy has hankered after for a while now.

In the box they provided

– Assault Striker G.A.R.-023 with target
–  Assault Striker S.R.-143 with target
– An Intelligent Targetting System
– Rapid Fire System Accessory
– Scope Accessory
– Enemy Scanner Accessory
– Refractor Launch System Accessory

I could talk about these for ages as they are all flashy lights, fabulous sound systems and the only thing we were missing to make it a fully fledged laser tag type set up was the jackets.    I can see the jackets being on the Xmas list this year.  The boys were over the moon to be playing with this set, and I don’t blame them.   Flashing lights, pretend guns and safe targets lets them play at superheroes and cops and robbers all day.

You need a lot of AA batteries though for everything so make sure you stock up on them if you buy these and take them home.   We’ve been using ours a lot and the original Duracell batteries seem to have coped well.

The simplest way to let you see what the guns to is to show you elders first attempt at you tubing his opinion on something.  He’s done pretty well for a first attempt, and for someone who struggles doing talks in front of groups.  Forgive the video for being a little dark, but he’s so proud of what he’s done, that he wanted it to be posted online.

Disclosure – We were given the Light Strike products for this review.

 

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Winner – Littlewoods Christmas Giveaway – November 2011

The winner of the fab prize from Littlewoods is : Squeakymom, or @meedja on Twitter.

DM me your name / address details so that we can get the goodies sent off to you.

We had a shortlist of 12 and through random picking, Squeakymom drew out as the winner at number 8.  Commiserations, but fabulous answers to the shortlist who were:

Katie Vyktoriah
mi_shmash
Zoe G
laura seaton
Zoe R
Susie
Tracy K Nixon
Squeakymom
Maria Knight
mazz mullarkey
Katherine Coldicott
Katherine Aitken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Special Birthday Film Night

Last week there was a little boys birthday in our house.  Thanks to the lovely Claire from Cheshire Claire, and talking to her about the successful film night that she had for her son’s birthday a few weeks ago, I decided to copy her and have a few friends over to play for littlest (ahem, sit and quietly watch a film was the plan).

There was much excitement for the planning of the party to come and littlest spoke of nothing else for about a week before the actual day.

The invitations went badly when a few of the children he asked turned him down flat.  School has been difficult for him recently and living with his brother is not easy, so I was sad to see him being distressed about it all and I decided to make it extra special for the boys who did manage to come.  I asked a few boys whose mothers I know and who do actually like my boy, rather than the popular crowd he would like to be in with.  With a few confirmed film nighters, it was down to me to arrange the quiet peaceful night to come.

I had strict orders of what had to be done for the party.   There were to be no brothers in attendance which I thought was fair for him, since he carries a heavy burden day-to-day with his older brother – and at times he is expected to act older than his years.

We started off with some fireworks.  Apologies for the poor quality photos for this post, but we were all so busy having fun that photos took second place to being mum for the night and I think that just set the boys off into mischievous mode.

I ordered a huge “beast” pizza from our local Snappy Pizza place and I wish I had managed to get a picture of the HUGE box, but alas, the kids dived in far too quickly for me to be able to get any worthwhile photos as I dished out and served up slice after slice of monster pizza, but I did manage to snaffle elders plate as he sneaked upstairs with his pal and their plates of swag from the party food.

This plate is for an 11 year old, and he came back for a double helping.

Now, onto the quiet part of the night.  Was film night as nice and quiet as I had imagined it?

I’ll let you decide that for yourself while you listen to the shy and retiring children play with the fabulous Hexbug Nanos that  we were provided to brighten up littlests night.  You will need your sound on to appreciate the peaceful and calming environment of the evening.

Did they watch a film – not on your Nellie.

The boys were here from 4pm and all picked up at 8.30 so it was a looooong party.  After they all left, I scooped out a lovely tub of ice cream and whipped up a sauce of condensed milk, the Nutella spread that was so thoughtfully gifted to us, and added  Smarties and Fudge.

Wickedly sinful, but perfect end to the day.  Yum.

And to the wonderful PR that provided us with the Nutella and the Hexbugs to make his party go with a bang, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The Hexbug Nanos made the night extra special.

Scottish Mum
x

 

 

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Sweet Temptation – Who’s Right – Teacher or Me? Help…..

We had a situation last week.   I may be reading too much into it, but it really irritated me to the bone.

On the way home from school, elder was very quiet and piped up that he had a letter than I had to sign for him to take back into school.  I didn’t think that much about it at the time and just thought it would be for “yet” another trip for P7’s.

At home, he sheepishly slipped the letter under my nose and I read it with total disgust.  Not in disgust at him I have to say (although I had to show him some displeasure) but in disgust at the contents.

It begins by saying this type of thing:

Dear Mss xxxxx
I am really sorry for stealing sweeties from your desk, and I know it was just too tempting, so please please forgive me and I know you can never ever trust me ever again for lying and nobody likes a thief.   I have to say sorry to the whole class and I hope you can forgive me.
Yada Yada Yada you get the idea.

 Some of you may be shocked that on this occasion, I didn’t give my boy the third degree, or make him bow and scrape to a pretence of guilt in front of me.  Some of you may stop reading right now, make your mind up what kind of person I am, and then you don’t find out my side of the story.

Wind my neck back in for a month and we find a group of “professionals” and I talking about my boy, his future, and his transition to the big school next year.  As part of that discussion, I tell them about my sons sugar addiction and cravings.  Bear in mind that I am not talking about your average pouty child who just likes a sweetie or two.

I have only recently come to terms with the fact that my son is a sugar addict and that it is part of his condition.  I specifically mentioned it at the meeting where his teacher was present as I had only just found out for myself that he was not just an out and out thief from the treat cupboard, but actually has an illness that is a side effect of his condition and compels him to ingest sweet stuff.  He is just lucky as can be that his genes keep him as slender as he is with all the stuff he packs away.

It helps me to understand why we cannot have lots of bags of sweets in the house, or lots of packets of biscuits as if he knows they are there, he will get up during the night and clear the cupboards.  This behaviour has caused many arguments in the family with extended groundings, removal of privileges, promises of treats to leave them alone etc etc etc and NOTHING worked.  I was so in the dark that I thought my boy was just pushing the limits further than is acceptable.

Back to the story.   We have the teacher INFORMED that he is a sugar addict and that it is part of his condition.  Then the teacher leaves a bowl of sweeties on her desk to give to the children.  I can only guess at the reason for the sweeties, but I suspect they are an incentive for good behaviour.

Picture this.  An empty room with no adults around, and a group of boys who probably have little opportunity to make the grade for one of these revered sweeties help themselves to one and congratulate themselves on their cleverness at outwitting the adults.  One of the boys feels guilty, so dobs the rest of them in and says he didn’t pinch any “so I am told by my boy” .  He also tells me that the dobber in got off with it.

At this point, I am fighting the urge not to laugh as in the same situation, if I were a child in their shoes, I suspect that I would have helped myself to one of those sweeties too.  I am also irritated with the teacher for putting such temptation in the way of someone who has a sugar addiction and expecting them not to take one.   I am even more irritated with myself for expecting the teacher to even to remember that he has a sugar addiction.

I will not be carrying on this issue at home though I cannot tell my boy exactly what I think of it all.

They were warned – and my boy had to take the same punishment as the other boys who took a sweetie, but heaven above – why, why, why would you leave a bowl of sweeties on a desk in front of a class of kids.   It is utter madness.

What do you all think?

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WordPress Back Up Lesson – Do you back up?

With the possibility of losing my whole blog when I updated a plugin earlier this week, I had to make some emergency plans for backing up my whole website and not just my database which is all that my host will allow me to easily back up.  Looking for how to back up a WordPress installation was not as easy as I had thought, but I did just stick to one of the first things that I had found.

I can use some html, and with the database backed up, it would only take a few hours to get everything up and working again, but I decided that I didn’t want to have to spend that much time at some point in the future to fix my beloved blog.

I can’t tell you all enough how important it is to back up your blog.  I lost a lot of work when my first blog went by the way of bloggie heaven by not backing up properly when I moved from wordpress.com to wordpress.org.

Today, I spent quite a while working through what could work and what might to back up the whole website.  Yes, my posts, and comments are saved in my database, but what about the theme, plugins and settings??

This back up is for  self hosted blogs in WordPress.org.  I believe that there is an easy internal back up feature for wordpress.com.

What we have to do is back up BOTH  the database (posts, pages, comments and users) AND the Files from your File Manager which includes all your pictures and other files.

How to Back up WordPress.org

To backup the database, there are several ways it can be done, but I will just tell you about 2 ways here.

Database Backup 1
Simply go to your WordPress admin panel, and click on Tools and Export.  From there, it will download a word file to your computer and save it in a named folder.  If you ever need to upload it to your WordPress account if disaster falls, then you have one backup ready to go.

Database Backup 2
Your hosting control panel will provide a way to back up your database.  I use two hosts, and on one, I can back up my database and website in one fell swoop and then download it to my computer.  Sadly, on Godaddy, I can only backup the database, but considering the database is where most of the work is kept, then it is a pretty important thing to do.

Backing up from your hosts control panel can be tricky as they are all different.  Your hosting provider gives you a control panel, most likely it will be cpanel, but I  managed to find myself on GoDaddy for one blog which doesn’t allow me to back up my files, but I can back up my database by selecting my hosting account and choosing to manage my account, database and mysql – and click the pencil to back up the database.  When it is clicked, a message pops up to tell you that it may take up to 2 hours to backup your database and overwrite your current database.  I would say it is probably good to have 2 database backups at any one time – just in case.

Get the tools for the job for backing up your files.

Plugins, plugins, plugins – oh yes, did I say plugins.  I like to keep my plugin list small(ish), but there are times that an extra plugin or two are pretty necessary for the health of your blog (not to  mention your heart).  If you are lucky enough to have a web host that backs up your files, or allows you to download them as zip files, congratulate yourself on choosing wisely.  The rest of us have to search out a solution that fits nicely with what we need to do.

If your own host doesn’t have the facility to back up your database for you (and most do if you look under database management in the file manager of your control panel)  – then you need to look at a plugin that will back up your database easily and send you the result for you to keep for the future.

Any database plugin is going to be a life saver in the event of a blog disaster, so it’s not the end of the world if you do this and don’t go any further – you’ll just lose your plugins, your settings and contents of widgets / image folders etc and have to upload them all again.

There are lots of plugins that you can use to back up your files, but whether they are all perfect and useable is debatable.  Doing it the easy way is what is important and I would recommend that you keep all your images on a disk at worst and look through the plugins to see what could work for you to make  your life easier.

I chose to try the “Online Backup for WordPress” to try and I had a look at how it works.  The screenshot shows that it can back up the files and the database.  I have not had the need to reload the files so I am not sure if it would work as well as it should, but there are certainly many other plugins out there that can be used to help safeguard your work.   I liked the fact that I could send my backup to email with this plugin, but I was soon disappointed as the size of the backup meant that it couldn’t be converted to email and sent.  It was simply too large a file for the spare php that I had available in my hosting account.

I then tried backing up via the download to computer choice which was much more successful.

The zip file that downloaded was easy enough to do and it took up much less space than the email version that it tried to convert.   It did come up with one error.  My backup file came up at 210 MG and of course, I can’t upload it to see if it works the other way round as it is for emergency only, but at least I have my database backed up in three different ways so the worst that can happen is that I have to upload my photo file and reset my theme options

 

Look at all the plugins and make all your own decisions on which version you want to use.  I am not going  endorse any one plugin as I cannot know how you would use the information, or whether your server would be capable of completing the actions.  If you value your blog or your website, make sure you spend some time on it before problems hit your server.

I also have a copy of all my files in a folder that I have added to my control panel and named as a backup.  Even if my server goes down, the full website with files will be stored in the backup from a date that it all worked properly and if needs must, I could back up from there.

I am planning to keep a file on my laptop for safe keeping.  Then, I may just get paranoid and also save them to a spare disk, but then again, maybe that is just going too far.

The next time I decide to go for hosting, I will make sure that the host does full website backups as well as just the database.

Have you backed up your blog / website ??  Leave a comment, and if you have any better suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment and let us all know about it.

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Leapfrog LeapPad Explorer – How does it shape up?

We were sent the LeapPad Explorer to review a couple of weeks ago, and because it was so close to middlers birthday, I held off giving it to him until the big day as I didn’t want him to have something so major so close to his birthday.

What is the LeapPad Explorer

It is a tablet device for kids.  That’s it in simple terms.   The age ranges goes from 4 – 9, but I suspect there are many children in the 2 – 3 age group who would get more benefit from one of these than using mum or dads Ipad or Iphone.  They have more information and there is a video you can watch of it here.

It uses apps based around learning, reading and creativity.   A built-in camera which takes photos and videos is included and gives it an authentic tablet experience for children with an attached stylus to help little fingers.   It even has a shake to move ability in some of the games for motion.

Out of the box.

The tablet has 4 apps and the LeapPad really needs to be connected to the Internet to get it to work completely.  It took us about 15 minutes to update the tablet and another 10 minutes to download the apps.  I have to say that we did have some leaplet cards we had bought for our Leapster Explorer and they work in the app store for the LeapPad which was a nice bonus.

We downloaded a full game that took £20 of money worth in cards, but it is the same price in Amazon so that was ok.   There are some E-Books for £5 and some smaller game apps for £5 or less.  The nice touch that I felt was missing when I reviewed the Leapster Explorer earlier in the year, is that you can now buy the apps online, just like in Itunes and they download onto your LeapPad automatically when you log into the account.

Another aspect that I found appealing was how all the apps and games from the Leapster Explorer are transferrable to the LeapPad Explorer so that if you bought a game for one device, it downloads onto the other as well.  For me this is a MAJOR bonus and VERY like how Itunes works with their Ipods, Ipads and Iphones – it’s a nice touch from a games manufacturer.

Testing

Well, I haven’t had much in the way of testing for this lovely little gadget.  Middler has rarely put it down.  At 10, he has special needs and has yet to learn to read and write his name properly, but he is drawing, playing and taking pictures constantly and he loves that it looks like a Tablet computer.  We have the Leapster Explorer with all the same games now and littlest has even been known to sneak one of them away to potter about on, even though he pretends that he is too old for it.

Owning the LeapPad

For me, it is preferrable that my son uses the LeapPad and leaves my phone alone.   On my phone, he tends to delete things I’d like to keep and with the LeapPad he is learning new things each time he uses it.

It’s a thumbs up from us.

Disclosure – We were given the LeapPad Explorer for this review.