Well, I've done it. I swore I wouldn't, but I did. I bought an iPod. I decided to start out small and buy an iPod shuffle with 512K holding 120 songs. It doesn't have the spiffy screen that the other iPods, like the iPod Nano have, but it will suffice. I have decided to call it my "music stick".

My children have been bugging me for an iPod for a long time. I didn't see what all the fuss was about, it's basically a music player. What's wrong with the CD player you got last year? Why, they are out of date of course! I went down to their school and saw that many of their peers own these iPods. Maybe I should mention that my oldest child is only 9-years-old and my youngest is 6.

So, I caved. I bought an iPod shuffle. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get it all installed and hooked up to my computer, then it took me a while longer to figure out how to put music into it. I'm not exactly technologically challenged, but this little iPod really took me a few minutes to get it working properly.

They are really easy to use once you have the programs uploaded onto your computer. The sticking point for me was that the version that came with the disk was out of date-I had to download a newer version from the Apple.com website. Once that was done and fully loaded, everything else was very easy to do, including loading 120 songs onto the iPod.

My children are now happy that we are fully immersed in the 21st century because we own an iPod.

At least now I don't have to hear "get with the times, mom" any more, and all I had to do was buy an iPod.