Rec for how to play books on CD or MP3? What is the best way to do this? What to buy?

[jrose_lee]

Hi!  Need a little help on what might be the best thing to buy here. 

Here's the situation: 

New baby due soon and 3 kiddos will be all in the back seat of our mid-sized car.  I am anticipating some fighting back there and some yelling, not to mention baby crying :o(

I was thinking if the two older boys (5 and 2) could listen to stories through headphones it might cut down on some of the fighting and maybe also help them when the baby is crying (because I know they won't like it...well, who does?)

So, what is the best way to do this?  It would be nice if whatever I bought had two headphone jacks so they could both listen to the same thing at the same time...and so that I could buy one thing instead of two. 

Also, after I figure out what to buy- what is the best place to get stories from?

TIA!

[beanma]

Do you just not want to listen yourself? We just play the stories on the car CD player or my iPod with a cassette adapter. It might mellow out the baby, too. Who knows!

Otherwise, if you want to go the headphone route, all you need is a little bitty cheap thing called a "headphone splitter". It's about $1 and you can probably get it at any RadioShack or Target, etc. It will plug into your listening device of choice, iPod, Mp3-player, CD player and then gives you two outlets to plug two sets of headphones in. 

We've let our kids use our old iPhones basically as an iPod touch when on a long car trip. I think they'd rather listen over the car speakers, but sometimes they do the headphones. The ear buds are tricky to get comfortable, though.

Oh, and the library is where we get most of our CDs. Free, free, free!