December 11, 2003

Mr. Ron J. Sidman
Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, and President
The First Years Inc
One Kiddie Drive
Avon Massachusetts 02322-1171

Dear Ron:

I just hung up the telephone on John Beals telephone call to me.

Ron, I appreciated your thoughtfulness in having your CFO call
me. However, I was unable to learn why you are paying the
dividend in December and not delaying payment to January, a new
tax year.

No one said the Board of Directors did not "consider" my
suggestion made July 24,2003 to please delay payment of the
scheduled year end December 15, 2003 payment until January 2,
2003 for the benefit of every tax paying shareholder (which is
far and away most of them, according to my examination and
analysis of the shareholdings), but it is very clear now from
John's opening words to me just moments ago, that the directors
"did not want to change the payment date", that they gave the
suggestion short shrift, and probably forgot all about it until
I wrote to you upon seeing the dividend declared on December 5.

This of course is evidence of the fact that the Board of
Directors did not give the payment date any serious
consideration way in advance of the announcement date on
December 5 and clearly did not even want to consider it
following my making this point at the July 24th Board of
Directors meeting.

First of all, John Beals would not tell me what factors were
considered in determining why it was better to pay the dividend
in the closing days of 2003 rather than delay payment until the
opening days of 2004. I asked him if he could list some of the
factors that the Board of Directors considered in the
determination of the December payment in their preference to
making a January payment.

He could not and that is clearly the reason he would not.

Paying the dividend to individual shareholders in December is a
shareholder unfriendly thing to do. Far and away shareholders of
KIDD are taxpayers. You and I are and the Board of Directors is
as well. All employees are taxpayers. All the mutual funds have
taxpaying holders and the mutual funds only own about 25% of
KIDD shares, many have IRA's as shareholders to whom a dividend
in December or January would make little or no difference
whatever.

So all in all, about 75% of shares are held by individuals and
the majority I will bet you anything are taxpayers. All of us
would have benefited from a year's grace on payment of income
taxes from receipt of cash income.

But I submit to you that when I asked John, "did the board make
a pile of all the reasons to pay the dividend in December and
another pile of all the reasons to pay the dividend in January;
which pile was higher?" He said, "I am not going to get into
that."

Give me a break Ron; please don't take me for a fool or for
someone born yesterday. I do not view you that way.

If you and the Board of Directors had good reasons, or even a
good reason, to pay the dividend in December and not in January,
then why couldn't John have "gotten into that"?

He couldn't, it became clear, because the Board of Directors did
not consider my suggestion last July 24th, did not even think
about it, did not take it seriously and probably did not take
the payment date as an important enough matter to debate or
discuss or ask questions about. It was probably placed in front
of them without any forethought and rubber stamped as a trivial
and unimportant and non-controversial matter.

That this Company gets a zero in Finance 101, and a failure in
Shareholder Relations101 comes as no surprise. But what does
come as a surprise is your complete failure to seriously and
fully consider any suggestions a shareholder makes. Why is this
Ron?

In this case the Company would have earned a bit more interest
on the cash to be paid out in dividends -- 22+ days more to be
precise, since from December 15 to the first real business day
of 2004 will be a period of 22 days.

Is this fair treatment of shareholders? Is this fair treatment
of a longstanding shareholder's suggestion? Is this not giving
short shrift to a perfectly reasonable suggestion? Is this
anyway to run a public Company?

I ask you Ron, and the Board of Directors; what exactly was it
that convinced you to pay the dividend December 15th and not
delay it until January 5, 2004?

Warmly,

Larry

Lawrence J. Goldstein
LJG/es
Page 2 of 3

Stocks overlooked or ignored by otherwise intelligent investors TM
SANTA MONICA PARTNERS, L.P.
1865 PALMER AVENUE
LARCHMONT, NY  10538

914.833.0875  ~  FAX: 914.833.1068
WWW.SMPLP.COM

LAWRENCE J. GOLDSTEIN
GENERAL PARTNER

EMAIL: ljgoldstein@bloomberg.net


Stocks overlooked or ignored by otherwise intelligent investors TM