Endangered DVD's = A big task for me

Our DVD's are in trouble. Madelynn started to take an interest in them just a little while after we moved. I don't know what all of a sudden made them so attractive. They have been on the same bookshelf for her entire little life, but it was not until recently that our shelves full of DVD's seem to call to her, beckoning her to pull them of the shelf and then do unspeakable things to them. Those unspeakable things include throwing them, desperately trying to open the case and get the disc out, scooting them across the room under one hand as she crawls across the room, and my absolute favorites, putting them in unkempt piles and then sitting or standing on them.

Once I realized that our DVD's had become endangered I took it upon myself to figure out how to save them. I know I will not be able to save all of our DVD's from our little princesses destructive grasp,  but I can try! I initially tried to come up with ways to block the shelves from her. I put her walker in front of the shelf thinking it would keep her away. Boy was I wrong! She used her walker like a step stool and would climb on it and get to the DVD's she couldn't reach before!

Then I started brainstorming contraptions I could make that would make it so that we could access the DVD's whenever we wanted, but would not allow Madelynn to get them. I started thinking about using tension rods and bungee cords and drilling holes in various places... all of those ideas fell flat. So, I decided, what the heck. I will let Madelynn keep wreaking havoc on our DVD's and just make digital copies of them all. That way when she breaks a disc I can just go  burn a new one and put it back in the case. 

After doing tons of online research about copying and burning DVD's and getting past the copyright encryption I found a couple of programs that are free that are working for me. I downloaded DVD Shrink and IMG burn and they have been working wonderfully for me. There have only been two Movies so far that they couldn't copy. Sadly, those two movies are ones I really cared about copying, so I found another program that I got a free trial of called Magic DVD Ripper that was able to copy them. I only have 3 trial uses left on that program and we may just end up buying it, but I am cheap and won't do that until I absolutely have too. 

I have now delved into the realm of backing up DVD's and I am already a little tired of it. I don't know if I will ever really get through all of our discs before I get super bored. We have over 250 DVDs and I have copied 28. Seriously, I have a lot to go. Also, we will run out of storage space before I can copy them all. Oh well I will do what I can to help my poor endangered DVDs.

She's on the move!

Madelynn decided that she wants to try and walk now. She has been standing and balancing on her own for about two weeks now and occasionally taking a step or two from one object to another. Well last night she decided to take things a step further.

Here is one of the few pictures we caught of her standing

We were sitting on our family room floor playing with some toys while McKay was doing some of his never ending homework when out of the blue Madelynn stood up on her own and took a couple of steps before she fell over. We were so proud of her! Luckily McKay was able to see it happen too. we were both clapping and using our silly high pitched parent voices to tell her good job. After that she just kept doing it over and over. She stood up and walked more in one evening than she has in the whole rest of her little baby life combined! I was so happy that she kept going because it meant I was able to catch some steps on video!

Here is the video. It is a little bit long and please forgive the silly high pitched mommy voice. Aren't walking babies so cute!?!