My mother is coming to town for Thanksgiving, which can mean but one thing for JP and Ellie: GRANDPARENT BRIBERY BONANZA! Yes, good ole Grandma Diane knows better than to get around the grandkids without peace offerings in the form of clothing, books, sketchpads, candy, and, in this case for JP, videogames.

I’m a little ambivalent about exposing JP to gaming at this age (4), although I admit that ultimately it’s inevitable. I have bought him some sort-of educational computer games, which he loves, but I’ve been unwilling to go beyond that to anything Xbox, or Nintendo, or whatever the heck it’s called. (Can you tell I’m not a devoted gamer?) But my mother, alas, has no such compunctions.

In fact, early this morning I had to talk her down off the ledge from buying JP a fucking iPad, for a 4-year-old. Why doesn’t she just get him hooked on lattes, implant the tracking chip in his brain, and get him working at Wired? There’s really nothing left.

And in the meantime, she can help me flee the angry mob of parent-haters who will come after me with pitchforks if they see my little boy smashing such an expensive and coveted piece of technology to bits on the sidewalk (which he most assuredly would do). Sorry, JP, it’s a no-go. Instead he will get grandma’s now-broken iPhone.

I am so fucked.

Now that wacky Taiwanese reenactment videos have become a reputable genre in their own right–akin to Noh theater and the bromance films–I imagine it’s time for DadWagon to forward along the latest, kiddie-related specimen. This one is about whether or not parent over-sharing on the Intertubes brings harm to our offspring. Since we here at DadWagon have already weighed in on this momentous issue (in our great wisdom), I’m going to leave my opinions out of this one, and you can just enjoy.

From my friend SkimKim, who has a funny and profane foodblog from the urban wastelands (and who showed me how to dismember a goat last year), comes this pretty incredible piece of existentialist urban stop-motion wall animation (does that cover it?). I’m not gonna try to make this be about fatherhood, except to say that imagination apparently doesn’t desert everyone after childhood. Some people manage to keep it alive and well. More power to them.

I don’t know much about the artist(s) who did this–you can find them here–but they work is sort of like Banksy in motion, which reminds me again of the awesomeness that was Santa’s Ghetto, the Bethlehem art/relief project from a few years back.  Anyhow, check them out. Amazing work.

More than a year after we started Sasha watching the “Baby Signing Time” series of DVDs, she’s had enough. Now, every evening when we turn the TV on to watch Rachel de Azevedo Coleman and her animated friends Alex, Leah and Hopkins (the Frog), Sasha freaks out. Sometimes we think it’s because, from volumes 2 to 3, Rachel goes from being humanly round to scarily thin. Other times we think Sasha’s bored—she’s learned all she can from the videos, which is quite a lot. She signs constantly, and signs as she speaks, to make her meaning clearer. But at this point, she’s gone as far as she can go.

Which means we’re now looking for a new video series to start her on. Ideally, since we’re ambivalent about her watching TV at all, we’d like it to be educational. But, of course, not so educational that it’s unwatchable for the rest of us (and Sasha herself). Songs are important—the repetition really drives lessons home. And I guess it should be age-appropriate, too: She’s 20 months old, and I’ve noticed some preschool-oriented shows are still too sophisticated for her.

So, any suggestions? I mean, besides turning the TV off and, like, actually engaging with her. Cuz God knows I’m not gonna do that!