Strollerderby : cute kids

What Would You Tell Your Kid to do to a Monster?

Shannon LC Cate — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:35:00 GMT

This funny little girl is cute indeed, telling her mommy what she'd do to a monster who came out of the television and into her home. (Warning: you should watch this before letting your kids see it.)

Okay, the kid is adorable and funny. That case is closed.

But what about the actual content of the discussion?

I am of two minds on such dialogues with my kids when they come up. On the one hand, giving a child the imaginary power to control something that scares her is probably a good idea. On the other hand, I am trying to teach my children cooperative, if not downright pacifist principals. So rather than correcting "ask" to "butt" I would probably suggest diplomacy with the monster: "offer the monster some tea and biscuits, honey, maybe the monster is just looking for friends!"

Am I a hopeless bleeding heart dooming my children to be walked all over? What do you think of this one?

What Could a Baby Really Do in Four Hours?

JeanneSager — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:49:00 GMT

When my daughter was a baby, a friend looked around my house and sniggered: "this place looks like my sister's house, what do your kids do all day?"

Don't worry, karma got him in the end - he's now the proud papa of two under two.

For those whose friends and families don't understand what their babies do all day to leave the house (and their parents) in such disarray, Glamour relationships columnist Joanna Goddard (author of Smitten) saves the day with a video at her personal blog, Cup of Jo. Her son Charles proves kids do plenty more than eating, sleeping and pooping.

Maybe it's the French music (?), but this is eminently more watchable than any "oh, look at my cute baby" video I've ever seen. Nine-month-old Charles Edward rolls, crawls, climbs, picks up toys and quickly abandons them. The sped up four-hour stint makes the little boy a little insect-like (and I mean that in the most endearing way Joanna!) - which proves kids really do have the attention span of a gnat at this age!

If you get only two minutes to yourself today, this is worth both of them:

Do You Let Your Kids Cheat?

JeanneSager — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:55:00 GMT

My in-laws came to town for the requisite weekend of spoiling, and left as always, some new habits with my daughter.

The artificial southern accent will go away soon enough (to my displaced southern husband's chagrin). It's the cheating I'm worried about.

Because, in true grandparenting style, my father-in-law let our daughter win at every game of Go Fish. But he didn't just bumble his play. He let her reach over and pick cards out of his hand. He let her shift through the "fishing" pile. He let her run right over him.

I've been asking around, and most people tell me to just ignore it. She's three; it will go away. It's cute.

Yes, she's three, and I don't expect that one game of cards is going to ruin her for the rest of her life. But shouldn't I be breaking this bad habit now? Maybe I'm reading a little too much into a pile of cards covered in different kinds of fish, but I can already see a life's obsession with having her way and always getting to win. She's already an only child, and we're aware of that slippery "spoiled only child" slope that we have to navigate. Letting her get away with cheating at cards seems like it would put at least one foot on the sandy edge of that slope.

Is it really OK to encourage a three-year-old to cheat because "it's cute?" What happens at five or six, when it stops being cute and starts becoming obnoxious?

Image: Kelly's Kindergarten

Review: Olivia the Pig Comes to Nickelodeon

Desperately Seeking . . . Grandparents

Is It Ever Too Late for the Thank You Note?

Kid and Kangaroo Best of Friends

JeanneSager — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:27:00 GMT

Why couldn't my mom have been a zookeeper? Yeah, she put food on the table, but having a mom in healthcare means hearing a lot about proper handwashing and absolutely no chance to nurse a baby joey abandoned by his mama!

Eight-year-old Lilly Dyson, however, hit the mom jackpot with a zookeeper mama who has been bringing home a baby kangaroo each day in an incubator designed to act like her mom's pouch.

The pictures of the Milly the joey and Lilly the kid are the kind you find of your mom's firstborn cuddling with your mom - the type that make you all indignant that it isn't you. Nose-to-nose, Lilly and Milly are obviously the best of pals.

The joey's mom fell ill earlier this month and was no longer able to carry her in her pouch. That was bad news for Milly - joeys generally spend at least nine months in mom's pouch before their first venture into the outside world (no wonder I've always felt a kinship with Kanga from Winnie the Pooh - we have nine months of carting kids in common). The joeys continue to spend a significant amount of time there until they are around a year.

Milly is still too young to come out of the incubator for anything more than limited amounts of time, and she requires round-the-clock care, with Lilly's mom Deb Dyson and her colleague splitting the bulk of the duties. But Lilly has gotten to lend a hand too - a rare chance, as this is the first joey to be hand-raised by the Melbourne Zoo (where Deb works) in more than two decades.

Baby joeys can be a handful (kind of like baby humans), but Deb says Milly has been a breeze - even with the one and four a.m. feedings. And Lilly looks like the luckiest kid down under!

Image/Source: Herald Sun

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Rare Baby Rhinos Found

Trick or Treating With the Obamas: Scary or Too Cute?

JeanneSager — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:15:00 GMT

Malia and Sasha Obama were trying to scare their dad when they dressed up as an "evil fairy" and corpse bride. Too bad the presidential candidate thought they were just too cute to be scary. It's a story Michelle Obama shared in a post to the largely female population of bloggers at BlogHer this week.

The Democratic candidate's wife highlighted a tale that could have happened in any house in America this week (I was wrapped in a hug by a friend's son who quickly turned and "grrrred" at me and asked, "are you scared?"). And she did so to introduce some snippets of campaign life that have driven home the greatest point we all need to remember come Wednesday morning.

As polarizing as the issues have been, as dedicated as we may have become to our separate causes, as passionate as we may always (and should always) be, come Wednesday morning, the vote is over. What will be left is a country full of people with the same basic goals in mind: food, shelter, clothing. Every parent, particularly, has a singular thought day in and day out: to give our children the best life possible. The ways we go about doing that, what that "best life" entails are all different. There's no getting around that, and only a fool would expect that to change on Wednesday morning.

But the little girls bouncing around a presidential candidate's home this week, tromping from door-to-door on Friday like millions of kids, wearing costumes worn by thousands of other little girls in America, are a reminder that no matter where we are and what we think, when life gets scary, we look at our kids. Cheesy? Yes. Sappy? You're darn tootin'. But our kids haven't been screwed up by all the adult ideas and mistakes yet. They're still just too cute to scare us.

Image: MSNBC

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Best of FameCrawler: Week of October 10th

Whit Honea — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Totally Biased Political Post Containing Cute Kids and Stuff (Video)

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Ricky Schroder Talks About Son's Accident

Madonna Scares Me

The Truth About Angelina Jolie

JLo: I Had A Nervous Breakdown

John McCain Bingo!

The Cutest Kid Pictures in the Universe

Cole Gamble — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:30:00 GMT

No matter how may pictures you take, no matter how much Vaseline you smear on the lens, your kid’s pictures will never be as cute as these.

You will never capture pictures like these because things this adorable don’t happen in real life. All of these events took place in the fantasy land of “Childhood,”™ a place that exists only in the minds of people who haven’t had kids yet.

Okay, to be fair, they are not all cute pictures. Some are preciously dangerous. When you look at these you have to employ the America’s Funniest Home Videos factor a little. Which is to say, ask why that parent is just standing there taking a picture when certain doom waits? Put down the camera and do something. It’s also known as the Cloverfield factor. Take the boy on the brink of shoving a knife into an electrical socket. Really?! You’re not going to drop the camera and intervene? Feels a little staged to me, dad. As for the rest of it, don’t let your kids catch you ogling these cute children online. They’ll think you got a wandering eye.

Strollerderby : cute kids

What Would You Tell Your Kid to do to a Monster?

What Could a Baby Really Do in Four Hours?

Kid and Kangaroo Best of Friends

Scholastic: Honoring the Mommy Bloggers

Sasha and Malia See Hogwarts with Harry

Let's Do the Twist, Baby

Newborn Baby Pics: Cute Little Aliens

Do You Let Your Kids Cheat?

Newborn Baby Pics: Cute Little Aliens

Review: Olivia the Pig Comes to Nickelodeon

Desperately Seeking . . . Grandparents

Is It Ever Too Late for the Thank You Note?

Kid and Kangaroo Best of Friends

Kid Won't Friend You on Facebook? Get a Life

New Babies Wrapped in Holiday Stockings

Why They Shouldn't Eat the Snow

Babble Talk: It Was an Accident

Toddler Befriends an Orphaned Baby Orangutan

Rare Baby Rhinos Found

Trick or Treating With the Obamas: Scary or Too Cute?

Best of FameCrawler: Week of October 10th

The Cutest Kid Pictures in the Universe