Thingamababy

My son crawling in a tunnel between two watermelon bin chambers. A glow-stick is taped above each tunnel entrance.

In this installment we discuss spending 8 to 24 hours converting a room in your home to an awesome cardboard fort. I’ve done it three times, for my daughter’s 3rd, 5th and 6th birthdays.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss a simple, low-key alternative for a year-round fort that will be the best toy your child will ever own.

Here we go.

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Thanks BabyZone. Click the “girl names” or “boy names” buttons. For added fun, click “boy or girl names” and make it a gender-guessing game. Click your browser’s reload/refresh button for more.

I like Ndirt for a boy and Sonar for a girl.

In my local baby/kids forum:

I have one cardboard room free for pick-up. You will need a truck and some method of securing it to the bed, otherwise it will fly. (I know from prior experience.)

It measures 82 inches long, 36 inches wide and is 36 inches tall. It is technically three cardboard lids secured by Mr. McGroovy’s box rivets. You may want to later secure it with packing or duct tape to make it more secure.

This was part of my child’s cardboard fort party and we are downsizing because we want a portion of our living room back. In your reply, please indicate when you can pick it up. Thanks.

A more detailed blog post is to follow. Unfortunately, the fort was too big to decently photograph.

Update: Thinga-reader Midge, unbeknownst to me a local reader, took the boxes.

The best family-friendly event held this weekend in my community wasn’t found on any event calendar. It was in the news section of the newspapers under such tantalizing headlines as “Live fire training planned.”

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Thinga-googler Ed is in a debate with his wife over what to name his unborn child if it comes out sporting a penis. If it has a vagina, it’ll get his mother-in-law’s name. But the penis problem has Ed vexed.

It seems some of the more interesting names you folks suggested in my Name My Baby Boy contest caused the webpages to pop up in his search results. Or maybe he saw the Top Eleven Names I Wish I Could Give my Baby Boy. I will forever regret not naming my son Flynn.

Naturally, Ed turned to me as a sympathetic, empathetic voice in his battle over little Jasper. I mean Rufus. Or maybe Roscoe. Oh, but Ed really likes Grover. And how about the timeless classic Ebenezer? Hannibal? Homer?

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The Daddy Files is written by Aaron, a father with one son. He’s married, has two cats and one dog. They are trying to give birth to a second child.

Here is a progression of recent events:

1. All out of miracles — Their last ultrasound reveals Sirenomelia, Mermaid’s Syndrome, a fatal defect almost as rare as conjoined twins.

2. Make it stop — The doctor asks about funeral arrangements for their scheduled surgery.

3. Flying solo — Surprise, their state law requires their doctor to explain in intricate detail what will occur during their abortion.

4. About protesters — Abortion protesters make the worst day of their life a living hell (video included as the father confronts an antagonizer). Click for direct link to the video (shot sideways).

So if you’re against abortion, that’s cool. Don’t have one. But when you decide to protest and scare people and make total strangers feel horrible, then you become trash. Human garbage. Excrement. And it’s my sincere hope that more people will stand up to these bullies in a non-violent manner and let them know what they’re doing is not OK.

5. MJ speaks out — His wife comments on the issue.

I have always believed that out of bad comes good. As we were leaving yesterday I looked around and realized all the protesters were gone and a marked cop car was parked in front of the building. As we turned to go home I asked Aaron, “What did you do?” He looks at me and says with a straight face “I didn’t get arrested!”

As we drove home, Aaron told me what had happened and how he went over there and had a talk with them. I was overcome with pride that he was able to single-handedly have the cops called on him by the protesters and that the protesters had to clear out. As I settled in for the hour ride home I finally felt a sense of peace, because we were able to give someone the opportunity to get help, make an informed decision about their body and future without being taunted or bullied by the people who have no idea what was going on!

Update: 6. Goodbye Princess. And thank you. — Her name was Alexandra Christine Gouveia.

So we will think of another name if we have a daughter in the future, because we already had a daughter named Alex. And while we never got to meet her, we will love and remember her forever. And hopefully so will some of you.

I don’t care. I laughed anyway.

That’s Simon Pegg (responsible for awesomely funny movies)  in the BBC sketch comedy Big Train. Don’t bother looking for it on the BBC America channel because that channel is in love with Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns. (Having one British actor in an American-made TV program qualifies Star Trek as an honorary BBC production, apparently.) Big Train is available on NetFlix though.

It seems I’ve worried my parents by not blogging for a week. Here’s an update on my previous post, Using football to raise a world-wise child.

Our almost entirely TV-free home has been obliterated in the name of watching World Cup games with my 6-year-old daughter.

I bought a sparkly new 40″ TV and subscribed to cable, bundling it with phone and Internet service, and of course a digital video recorder. In short, I went whole-hog back into media. (Yeah, it’s not just for World Cup. Umm, it’s for the Tour de France too!)

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As I type, my daughter has a friend over. Our front room is completely occupied by a massive cardboard fort. They are not in it. It’s sunny outside, the temperature is pleasant, and we have two swings hanging from our tree. They are not on them.

They are sitting on a couch in our family room. My 5-year-old daughter is reading her friend a book.

I just told her, “You have a cardboard fort and it’s sunny outside and you want to read a book?”

The two of them look outside, and my daughter says, “We could read in the sun.” Her friend says, “I’ll go put on my shoes.”

The book: Mummies in the Morning from the Magic Tree House series. To their credit (?), they’ve just left the book on an outside table and are swinging now.

It’s okay as long as you don’t encounter any elementary school-age children. [Available from Zazzle]

Baby GoGo by Little Sib bills itself as “a modern doll appropriate for a boy or a girl to play with.”

At its core, you’re buying a 13-inch gender-neutral doll wearing gender-neutral sleepwear. It comes with a blanket and a picture book titled Baby GoGo Goes Home, for a total suggested retail price of $40. A color-coordinated diaper bag is $25, and a Moses Bed will be available this summer.

As the title indicates, the picture book’s premise is that Baby GoGo was just born and is coming home, perhaps making it well-suited to a child expecting a sibling.

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Our Auntie M visited this past weekend. She has almost total vision loss, but that didn't stop her from feeling Big Sister's hands to learn how to sign the alphabet and numbers. Here she's learning the number eight. Big Sister has rapidly picked up sign language from a series of DVDs her little brother is watching so that his speech impairment isn't quite so frustrating.

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Last year I wrote a diatribe about my distaste for handwritten inscriptions inside books, and was roundly castigated by just about everyone.

An unusual circumstance presented itself today. A nearly new children’s book I bought at a yard sale contains the following inscription in a child’s handwriting:

Jane Doe! have a nice day!

I’ve changed the girl’s name for this discussion. The writer was presumably a friend, probably a classmate, who wrote a surprise message in the book.

The issue troubling me is that the girl, this 9-year-old girl, died two years ago in a well-known hit-and-run incident in our community. Two scumbags were racing on a highway and one of their vehicles hit a SUV, killing the girl — a twin no less.

My wife worked with the girl’s mother for three years in college, so she had a bit of a reaction when she discovered the handwritten note.

The question I’m pondering is whether to keep the inscription, or to rip the page out (which is easily doable because it’s an otherwise blank page). I have no doubt that this book will go on to have other future owners.

I could make arguments either way, so I’m curious what you think.

1. Klutz Build a Book: Why I Love My Dad ($12.95)

This gift is one a child gives his or her dad. Above, you see the cover of the book my 5-year-old daughter created last night. She’ll be working on one or two pages at bedtime each evening with her mom this week in preparation for Father’s Day.

She devised this cover on her own, writing “Party for Papa” in Spanish, in part because she attends a language immersion elementary school where she is learning a second language. She knows English obviously, finishing kindergarten testing at a sixth grade reading level. [/brag]

In the center of the cover are two foam hands with initials on them to signify her name and my name (P = Papa). She could have used background sheets contained in the kit to give the book cover a full-color background, but my wife tells me my daughter was quite clear on the point that she has other plans for those backgrounds. She has the whole book mapped out in her mind.

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My wife was smiling last week as my daughter told me of the wonderful gift I’m going to receive for Father’s Day. My daughter is going to cut my hair.

I was smiling yesterday as my daughter told her mom about the wonderful gift she is going to receive for her upcoming birthday. My daughter is going to cut Mom’s hair, apply make-up to Mom’s face (having never seen it done before, by the way) and then the whole family is going out for dinner. Yay!