Intermittant problems closing the cassette holder and playing the video (using the camera)

I have two problems. Periodically I cannot get the cassette to stay in the camera. I put it in. The camera spits it out and "yells" at me. (My frustrated version of the insistant error beeping.) Usually if I keep trying over and over I can eventually get the cassette to stay in. For the record I've not ever pushed on the part where it says "Don't push this mechanism" or something like that. My second problem is where I go to play the tape back, or record and you can actually hear the camera make whirring noises like it's going then it's not going, then it's going. The best way I can explain it is whir... whir... whir... whir.... The video doesn't show either, it seems that it will flash on a brief second then won't show anything but blue screen for awhile. Then it will flash another seen. I'm sick about this because we have video of our second child just after she was born. Any thoughts on this? Is this a common problem? We haven't had this camera more then two years.