This is a follow-up to my last post about a ride-in Dalek toy. Daleks are, of course, the British scifi TV equivalent of Hitler, the perfect ethnic-cleansing machine, genetically engineered hate. Oh, but great fun when made into a children’s toy.
I present to you the adorable American equivalent, Mini Darth Vader in a Volkswagen commercial.
[link via local-to-me blogger Redheaded Blackbelt]
While 0.1 percent of the people reading this will understand, umm. I want. I want. I want.
Boy in the Box: 1909. Unlike most old child labor photos, this kid is smiling. Who knows why he’s smiling, but I like to think it’s because he’s playing during his lunch break.
I’ve been giving some thought to how our home is decorated.
In my 6-year-old’s room, in the past couple years, I’ve planted a framed map of the US, a globe and a poster of world flags, which she has taken a liking to based on how we’ve raised her. Geography and awareness of people and events outside our borders are certainly teaching priorities for me. I’m trying to find a place to put a Dymaxion map, the type where the continent sizes aren’t distorted — Africa is big, Greenland is small, and Antarctica makes sense.
I’m now rethinking the walls in the rest of our home and have decided historical photos are a good solution. For one, I love them. And two, my wife and I disagree on virtually everything when it comes to style. So I’ve given her the challenge of generating a list of images she likes from Shorpy’s Blog.
Every day, Shorpy’s Blog presents a few high resolution historical images that have been raised into the public domain. Most can be purchased as prints.
It raises some interesting issues as to what photos we will both find interesting and yet still contain a message for our kids. But that message really only needs to provide a sense of history, of how things used to be and how much they have improved.
A city street scene can show life before cars, dirt roads, very wide wooden sidewalks in a society built around pedestrians, newspaper stands, formal conservative attire, etc. Just a beach scene reveals interesting ideas about old-time modesty.
Just last week, I showed my daughter a photo of a used bookstore we were going to visit, except it was a photo from 1913 when the bookstore was a bank. The expanded view reveals the amazing number of wires that utility poles used to carry, and shows a local movie theater in the process of being renovated for its grand opening (a bunch of debris sits out front). The theater is still in operation today.
Here are a few of my personal favorites:
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How better to explain New Year’s Day to a toddler than to say it’s the world’s birthday?
Yeah, I tried explaining the Gregorian calendar to my 2-year-old son, but he was having none of it.
If your kids are old enough to understand the new year, but can’t stay awake, show them celebrations from around the world. It’s one of the side benefits of living in North America — being among the last to ring in the new year.
Last year, after filming their 3-year-old son showing disgust at receiving books for Christmas (and the parents laughing), and presumably after users of Youtube attached critical comments to the video and the parents turned off commenting on the video… the kid is back!Yesterday, the parents filmed their now 4-year-old son receiving books for Christmas. Ta-da!
My take is, based on the questioning of the parents, that the video was shot in response to Internet critics. I hope we’re seeing a genuine response from the boy, and not the result of coaching, but anyhow…
For our part, our daughter received two Mary Poppins books, The World of Little House (she’s re-reading the series for school now), and Ramona the Pest. She was most enthused about Ramona because I’ve been stalling her reading our softcover version for weeks because I’d picked up a large format hardcover edition (25 cents at a yard sale) and set it aside from Christmas.
The stockings were hung by the cardboard fort with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
For the folks visiting here after reading my fort-building advice blurb in the (January 2011?) Parents Magazine issue, here’s what else I’ve said on the subject:
And if you haven’t seen the magazine: binder clips. They are your secret weapon for connecting blankets together in a blanket fort. When not building forts, they’re awesome for cinching closed kitchen bags. I have several dozen and use ‘em on everything from potato chip bags to frozen burrito bags.
They laugh in this video, but if it were my son, I’d be severely disappointed in him and myself.
[Link via Reddit /r/parenting]
The Winter Ogre's view upon picking the lock to our front door. The socks overlap a sandblasted picture that normally hangs in our entryway.
I joked about it last year. This year I’m bringing the magic, joy and wonder of the Winter Ogre to life!
A few days after December 21, the first day of winter, the ogre giant comes down from the forested hills to stock up for winter. Under cover of darkness, he breaks into homes in our town and steals the provisions he needs. Ogres are simple and child-like in some ways, and so he grabs toys and other shiny and pretty objects he finds, in addition to practical things such as food, water and blankets. Ogres are largely scavengers, after all.
That is why each December we hang two giant ogre socks just inside our front door for the ogre to see as soon as he arrives. (It’s a little known fact that ogres always enter through the front door, being excellent lock pickers with little patience for climbing or knocking down fences.)
Upon seeing the specially designed ogre-size socks, his cold heart melts at the warmness of our gesture… for what could the small-foots who dwell here do with such large socks? They must surely be a gift to the ogre.
And so it is that the ogre returns the gesture. He takes the socks and leaves our home untouched but for the addition of toys and other goodies he collected from other homes that night.
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Behold Takkie Kakkie, the world renown pooping dog game from Goliath Games! It’s from the Netherlands. You may have seen the viral German commercial (embedded below). In Germany it’s called Kackel Dackel, which translates to Laughing Dachshund. The game is apparently not being sold in US, too high-brow for Americans.
A pending new dad on social media site Reddit.com (expecting his first child by Christmas) made a general call for any sort of parenting advice. One user mentioned a parenting book, and so I posted this semi-sort-of-related comment:
This is an aside. You’ll see a lot of toddler activity books that involve making toys with household objects. You’ll fondly remember Calvin & Hobbes playing in a cardboard box. You’ll even let your kid play in a cardboard box for a few days after you buy a major appliance, before recycling the box. But then, every Christmas you’ll buy a crapload of plastic toys and electronic gadgets for your kid that crush his inherent ingenuity and imagination.
Read these three books:
Our breakfast was loosely based on Better Homes & Gardens Silly Snacks, the holiday section titled Gobblers. They proposed a turkey made from two sizes of Ritz crackers, shoestring potatoes, corn nuts, carrot, raisins and pimento.
My wife used waffles, pancakes, walnut, cranberry, apple slices, tangerine slices, cheese stick strips and mini marshmallows. It’s a big deal for the kids because we are not one of those ultra-food-decorating families.
Thank goodness Mary Poppins is now a Broadway musical. It has spawned some (relatively) inexpensive souvenirs.
Behold a parrot-handle child-size umbrella, as modeled by my 2-year-old above. My 6-year-old daughter is receiving it for Christmas. I exploited my son’s speech disability to take the photo with no concern he’ll blab to his sister.
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