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"It's got a leg like me!"

This is Emma Bennett of Cyress, Texas. The 10-year old girl was born without a right leg and wears a prosthetic one. She loves her collection of American Girl dolls, but has long wanted one that looked like her.

So her mom sent a doll to A Step Ahead Prosthetics, a company that makes prosthetic limbs for dolls. KHOU (auto-play) reports that a month later, the doll came back with a new right leg. It's pink, which is Emma's favorite color.

When Emma opened the box, she began crying with joy for a gift that made her incredibly happy. At the end of the video, Emma said to the dollmakers, "Thank you for making a doll like me!"

-via Huffington Post

Justin and Rachel Vollmar and their three older children are part of the Deaf community and consider their deafness as part of their cultural identity. Their fourth child, Clarisa, is DeafBlind, which presents a challenge, but one that the Vollmars are better equipped for than most families would be.

“When Clarisa was born, my wife Rachel and I immediately agreed that we will modify our family to Clarisa's needs and make sure that she is fully involved with family at all times.”

What is the best way to do that? They are figuring it out as they go along. Most DeafBlind people are born with some level of deafness and slowly lose their vision. They have early exposure to language and a visual concept of the world and social interactions. (Helen Keller also had this; she became DeafBlind as a toddler). A baby born DeafBlind doesn’t have that, and the case of DeafBlind from birth is very rare. The Vollmars have consulted with teachers, specialists, other parents of DeafBlind children, and importantly, DeafBlind pro-tactile advocates. They have made public their journey to find the best way for Clarisa, and it’s a remarkable model of how a family can bring a child into their world by being truly attentive to her view of the world.

Clarisa is almost a year old now, and her family has been communicating with her in American Sign Language delivered in a pro-tactile way since birth. After all, babies are exposed to language a long time before they can use it themselves.  

Read about Clarisa and her family at mental_flosss.

Follow Clarisa’s progress at Facebook, where videos are delivered in sign language with captions and images are tagged with machine-readable descriptions.

(Image credit: Clarisa Vollmar at Facebook) 

I think I found the new host for Master Chef Junior. 

Claire Dempster posted this adorable picture of her mini-chef on her Twitter account asking Gordon Ramsay if he happened to have been in Wales within the last ten months or so. Best of all, Ramsay himself replied stating that yes, he was actually there about 11 months ago.

Yes about 11 months ago https://t.co/srAtXfFJa9

— Gordon Ramsay (@GordonRamsay) May 26, 2016

Sure, it could just be a coincidence, but with an uncanny resemblance like that, I smell a conspiracy.

Via Thrillist

In 1999, a horrified mother took this picture of her daughter just before telling her to come down. The redditor with a NSFW name posted it and explained what kind of childhood she led.

The trick we came up with was to spit on our hands and feet and rub it in so they were kind of sticky (gross, I know). I basically just shimmied up like a bear cub. I remember having to take a pretty long breather about halfway up. Childhood is a hell of a drug.

Haha she had the camera in one hand and the phone in the other, ready to call for help if I fell. She said she didn't want to yell or panic because she thought it would scare me and I would fall. So she acted supportive then asked me nicely to come down and when I did I got a stern talking to about safety.

My mom got many a call from the neighbors saying, "do you know where your daughter is?" and she would say, "probably very high up in a tree. Call me back if she falls."

Yeah, as a girl wanting to be tough like the boys in my neighborhood I wound up getting hurt pretty often. I once climbed onto the cross beam of a playground swing set and thanks to a group of kids chanting "jump jump jump," I did, landed on my butt, kneed myself in the mouth, and broke 4 of my bottom front teeth. Many a bad choice was made.

-via reddit

Mothers tend to get all the applause and praise when it comes to parenting, but when fathers are faced with a crisis their bravery knows no bounds.

Take valiant father Ben Patterson for example- he watched his kid while his wife went out with friends, and when his son started projectile vomiting in the car he handled the situation with stoic dignity.

What's worse is Ben's a sympathetic vomiter, so his son's puking sent him into a paternal pukefest on some lady's lawn.

The lady naturally called the cops, but Ben kept it together and kept texting the entire horrific story to his wife, who was apparently too busy not giving a f$%k to text the poor guy back!

In true daddy style, Ben has chosen to see the incident as a learning experience, and vows never to babysit again without the proper equipment.

-Via FAILBlog

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The little boy desperately needs a fork so that he can eat his food. But his mommy won't give him one. She keeps telling him to just use the one that she has cunningly hidden in his right hand. She can't expect him to find it there!

-via Tastefully Offensive

When the captain tells you to get in the boat, you better not waste any time! A playground at Munson Park in Monroe, Michigan, is the setting for an epic high seas adventure.

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When you’re James Hashimoto, the Action Movie Kid (previously at Neatorama), you can go with the flow, because you know that sooner or later, the stories in your adventures will come to life on video. But even if you aren’t, your parents can learn to do this from the tutorials his dad shares. You can see how this particular video was made here. -via Metafilter 

Kids who use wheelchairs sometimes find that conventional costumes on sale won't work for them. That's when Walkin' & Rollin', a non-profit organization in Kansas City, comes in. The artists there specialize in the costuming and cosplaying needs of children who use wheelchairs.

It's the brainchild of Lon Davis, who started the organization after building a WALL-E costume for his son, Reese. After encountering the challenges of integrating a costume into a wheelchair, Davis began offering the service to other families for free. Last year, Davis described the design task to The Mighty:

“A lot of what Reese helps with is helping me to understand what works for a child in a wheelchair and what doesn’t,” Davis told The Mighty. “When I build a costume for his chair, he will give me hints like, ‘No, you can’t do that because then I can’t reach my brakes for my chair,’ or ‘If you attach that bar here instead, then I can get in and out of my chair easier.'”

You can see photos of costumes that Walkin' & Rollin' has produced here.

-via Super Punch

Between helicopter parenting, kids staying indoors instead of going outside to play and schools instituting stricter policies regarding recess, the young folks can't have any fun these days.

So when Julie Walsh Holcombe found out her sons got in trouble at school because they were climbing a tree and playing like normal kids she sent a strongly worded memo and a permission slip to the teacher and guard involved.

Julie's kids look too old to be getting hassled about climbing trees, but now they have official permission to have fun!

-Via FAILBlog

Yannick Vicente, a French artist, is raising his 4-year old daughter Anaé. Recently, he illustrated 4 moments that he shared with his precious little girl. He loves her so much and people around the internet have been charmed by how he has expressed it.

(Photo: unknown)

At Fashionably Geek, Geek Girl Diva writes, "I have no idea who this Batman baby belongs to." He belongs to Thomas and Martha Wayne, but that's not commonly known. Now young Bruce is getting an early start on avenging the murder of his parents. He's armored for war, just in case he has to deal with heavy interference from Metropolis.

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Twitterers in their teens and twenties get all the attention these days, which is totally unfair to those hard-working guys who gave those kids their smartphones and can take them away if the kids don't behave- the dear old dads.

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Fathers have some really funny things to say about life with kids, and Twitter is now the platform of choice for dads with too little time on their hands for long form posting.

Besides, sometimes 140 characters is more than enough to paint a pretty picture.

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With Father's Day right around the corner it's time to let dear old dad have the social media spotlight for a while, so we can celebrate the guy who wants to help us make our dreams come true.

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See 20+ Of The Funniest Fatherhood Tweets Ever here

How many sit-ups could you do in an hour and a half? How about 10 minutes? Or just until your body gave out?

Kayleigh Bass of Kansas City, Missouri is a high-endurance sit-up producing machine. At only 10 years old, she completed 2,110 of them in 90 minutes, smashing the previous record of 2001 sit-ups. Even though she almost threw up, Kayleigh kept going until she completed this incredible goal for Project Fit America, a non-profit organization that promotes physical fitness. Fox 4 Kansas City reports:

“It’s a mind thing. If you think about it, you can do it and you’ll make it,” Kyleigh said.

Kyleigh was already on the board with 800 sit-ups but she wanted to be at the very top. So P.E teacher, Bill Lentz, helped train her to reach that goal.

“I like to think I am an active person, but I’m inspired. She’s my hero and hopefully I can work out half as hard as she does,” said Lentz.

-via Oddity Central

Annelies van Overbeek has a combination of talents: makeup, wardrobing, and facial expression. When combined, she can perfectly mimic the great stars of the past, including actress Audrey Hepburn, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Vivian Leigh from Gone with the Wind. She doesn't use Photoshop or a sophisticated camera--just her smartphone.

(Zach Weinersmith/Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

As luck would have it, I am wearing cargo shorts and just took off my phone holster, which I wore while taking my kids to a park.

Zach Weinersmith, who is himself a father, understands that conception changes not only a woman's body, but a man's as well.