Jefflog

Just before Maggie was born, we bought a video camera, and have been recording her ever since. No doubt you’ve seen some of the better video clips on the sidebar. Naturally, we shoot much more footage than that; we’ve filled up 12 DVDs of home movies so far, and that’s just the edited footage.

On each of these DVD’s, of which we make copies to send to family members, we include a photo slideshow of the pictures taken during that period, set to music. On the latest DVD (volume 12), the slideshow was good enough that I wanted to share it with my readers. If you are so inclined, you may download the Quicktime video. It’s about 10 megabytes and doesn’t stream, so expect to wait a while before it starts playing.

The music in the slideshow is a piece called The Chase by The Wiggles. We downloaded (legally!) their Yummy Yummy album a few months ago, and Maggie loves it a lot. She likes to dance to most songs, and after each one is over, she exclaims “More!” (in a very sweet tone).

The Wiggles are surprisingly good, mostly original pieces that are simple but not dumb. They’re much better than most “children’s music” you find on the market today, which tend to be uninspired renditions of children’s classic songs. (Barney the Dinosaur, I’m looking straight at you.) The Wiggles seem to be good enough musicians on their own, but they’ve used the niche of kid-oriented themes and songs mostly under 2 minutes. Despite this, I find myself liking some of the songs almost as much as Maggie does. It’s hard not to sing along to Hot Potatoes or Fruit Salad. If you’ve got a toddler in the house, I highly recommend them.