Strollerderby : teddy bear

How Do You Spell 'Burberry'?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:30:00 GMT

It’s so much fun to hear language be manhandled by kids who are highly verbal but still preliterate. Their untrained ears find hilarious and creative sounds in words that we adults have memorized too well to really hear anymore.

When I was little, I used to think that the word “reconnoiter” was actually a phrase: wreck and order. Whenever my mom suggested that we reconnoiter a beach or a park, I thought we were going to trash the joint and then clean up after ourselves—which is, actually, pretty much what we did.

A four-year-old featured on today’s Kids Say the Cutest Things had a very sophisticated linguistic misunderstanding about her stuffed animal. Here’s how her mom or dad explained it: “My daughter has a bear that has a Burberry pattern scarf. The lady at the portrait studio asked what her bear was called and my 4 year old responded, ‘His name is BurBear, but I don't know what his last name is. It's starts with an E.’”

It makes so much sense that a four-year-old heard the “bear” in Burberry, while we adults only hear the cha-ching of the cash register.

Photo: http://myviewsmyideas-rubal.blogspot.com

Mom Bugs Kid's Teddy Bear to Spy on Ex

JeanneSager — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Convinced your ex is up to nefarious deeds? If you're thinking about planting a recording device in your preschooler's teddy bear for his next visit to Dad's pad, you might want to REthink your plans.

William "Duke" Lewton of Nebraska is in the process of suing his ex-wife for bugging their four-year-old's bear to catch any big secrets revealed during his custody visits. As in, anything she could use against him in court.

Lewton alleges Dianna Divingnzzo or her dad (Lewton's former father-in-law) slipped a tape recorder into the little girl's bear, then tried to use the tapes during child custody proceedings in court. Too bad for Divingnzzo, the judge threw them out as inadmissable.

I'm not up on laws in Nebraska, but as a reporter in New York, I'm aware that in order to make a legal recording, at least one party to the conversation has to be aware he or she is being recorded. So if, say, Divingnzzo was caught on tape with Lewton - that part would likely be admissable here (since she knew they were being taped). Any other conversation would be off limits - including Lewton's talks with his daughter. The judge in the couple's custody case said even hearing the tapes would be illegal, as was the taping itself.

I feel kind of icky about the people who plop a camera in their kid's bear to watch the nanny. I can't imagine making the kid's toy part of my own plot to limit her time with Daddy. Talk about sullying the innocence of childhood.

The tapes, by the way, revealed nothing more than normal conversations between a father and his little girl, according to a report in the Omaha World-Herald.

The person who thought to rip a head off a kid's teddy bear, stuff a tape recorder inside and fasten head and body back together, however? Not normal. Not by a long stretch.

Image: CubeMe

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Did Teen Mom Kill Baby -- And Her Baby Brother?

Kate Tuttle — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:31:00 GMT

Seventeen-year-old Nga Truong is being held without bail in the death of her year-old son, Khyle, whom she confessed to suffocating to death with a teddy bear. Now prosecutors are wondering whether she was also responsible for the death of an infant brother under remarkably similar circumstances eight years ago.

Her defense attorney says the Worcester, Massachusetts, teen is just a scared kid who gave a false confession after being questioned without an attorney or parent present. But the cops say she opened up about Khyle's death after they brought up the 2000 death of her baby brother, Hien, then three months old. Although that baby's death was never investigated for foul play -- and was blamed on SIDS -- Truong, who had been left alone to babysit her younger siblings at age eight, was the person who found her brother's body, attracting suspicion that Khyle's death wasn't the first time she'd smothered a baby boy in his crib.

This is a sad, sad story all around. According to the Boston Globe, Truong is currently pregnant again, and lives with her 31-year-old mother and several siblings, ranging from infant to teen. Although Massachusetts social services say they have been involved with the family, they cannot release more details. It seems clear that babies are not safe in that house, though.

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The Country Goes To Hell In a Handbasket: Devil or Darwin?

Kelly Mills — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:31:00 GMT

Sometimes I read the news and just get, well, depressed. The story about the teacher who was arrested in Sudan for allowing her class to name a teddy bear Mohammed was one of those stories that got me all irate and blue. I mean, what is the world coming to? Why, it's like religious fundamentalism has completely swept away the reason and intelligence of a sizeable group of people. And then I had to see this one. Yeah, a poll found that more Americans believe in literal hell and the devil than "believe" in Darwin's theory of evolution. In fact, while 82 percent believe in God and 62 percent believe in the devil, only 42 percent go along with Darwin's theory. Which kind of makes me think the U.S. has evolved into a nation of idiots. Or failed to evolve out of idiocy. Whatever.

Don't think this news matters much? Well, the poll "helps explain many of its political battles which Europeans find bewildering, such as efforts to have 'Intelligent Design' theory--which holds life is too complex to have evolved by chance--taught in schools alongside evolution." I'm on team European on this one. I grew up in a religious household, and of course I've got no problem with anyone believeing in God or gods or the devil and whether or not he plays a mean fiddle. But religious belief is based in faith, and the theory of evolution is, you know, science. We are supposed to appraoch the two differently. They shouldn't be mutually exclusive (and weren't in my house) but I don't really want someone else's faith added to my kid's curriculum at school either. I just start to wonder what would happen if a teacher let a class name a stuffed monkey, "Jesus."

Teacher Held For Teddy Bear Name

Kelly Mills — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:40:00 GMT

Hey, here's a real treat of a story: A British teacher in the Sudan is being held by authorities after allowing her class of seven-year-olds to name a teddy bear they used for a class project. The name they chose by vote? Mohammad. So while the kids were learning about animals and taking turns bringing the bear home on weekends and keeping a journal about the adventures of Mohammed, they were supposedly commiting blasphemy. Or at least the teacher Gillian Gibbons was. Of course Gibbons had no idea the bear name project would enrage anyone, and her fellow teachers at Unity say she just made an innocent mistake. There are reports that young men have started gathering outside the station where Gibbons is being held, and her colleagues are afraid for her safety. She could also receive up to three months in prison and a fine.

I think the story ends like this: Ultimately, the authorities, the young men, and all those who condemned Gibbons realized that the outrage over a teddy bear named by seven-year-olds was ludicrous. Once they came to their senses, everyone understood that insane fundamentalism in any religion (and it certainly isn't limited to Islam, just ask the Reverend Phelps) runs so counter to the most basic teachings of these religions that it becomes itself a kind of blasphemy, and a perversion of faith. That no god, prophet, or religion worth following would demand serious retribution for a teddy bear's name. Well, when that dawned on everyone, a new kind of understanding was born, and people began to live in a great deal more harmony than before. And kids learned stuff in school projects besides, "My teacher blasphemed when she let us name that bear."

That is how it ends, right?