today it's an ipod--what will it be tomorrow?

There has been a lot of talk around our house about what Samuel wants for his birthday. Though it's a bit indulgent, my kids know that their birthdays are the one day a year where I'll finagle and wrassle whatever to figure out how to make things go their way (within reason, of course!). So after the kid got over the fact that we absolutely will not buy him an iPhone (seriously???), he lowered his expectations and told us he wanted an iPod.


Okay, I can get into that--he can listen to music in his room, or in the car... And nine years old seems to be about the time where a kid gets pretty interested in their own music. But then he started talking about being able to download movies on the Nano and play games, and the truth is, I just don't want him downloading movies or games so that he can sneak off to his room and watch in private. Partly it's because I totally don't trust his own judgement as to what is okay and not okay to watch, but it's also that I want him hanging out with the rest of the family, too. And seriously, the kid has a Wii and a DS. Why does he need another form factor to play games on?


So after much discussion with his grandparents, we all agreed that a Shuffle would be the best move. Super cute, no screen, lots of music. And the other day, a package arrived for Sam in the mail from his Saba Moty and Grandma Myra. When he saw the Apple box he was ecstatic. And then he noticed there wasn't a screen on the shuffle.

"Um, there's no screen," he said.

"You don't need a screen to listen to music," I said, holding tight.

"Hey, you're right!" He grabbed the shuffle to charge it and then listened to the songs his Saba recorded on the shuffle of his own music over and over until he went to bed.

The next morning he wanted to download music from iTunes.

"I need an email address," Sam told me as he maneuvered through the site.

"No, you don't," I told him. I'm picturing him receiving spam about xxx enlargements and not being able to filter that from real email, whatever that is when you're nine years old.

"But how else will I buy music?"

"You don't have a credit card," I said. "You need one to buy music, so until you have one, you have to ask Daddy or me. An email address isn't going to help you with that."

"Okay," he said thoughtfully. "I need a credit card."

"What you need is a full-time job," I told him. "But you can't have that yet, either."

I'm bracing myself... The tween years are approaching.