Nothing like a good incentive to keep an eye on your children! The caption at Shorpy reads, "Yes, Billy was lost. But he was also plump and juicy!" This photo was taken at the National Zoo in Washington in 1943. Well, it was wartime, and Lion Chow was probably in short supply. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Lilly Allen, 10, was playing hopscotch outside her home in Kent, England, when she was approached by police officers that her chalk drawings on the public pavement was criminal:

[Lilly's father Allen] told the tabloid newspaper: “Two policemen in a car drove up to her and said it was illegal to draw on the floor as it was criminal damage. "I am absolutely seething they have done this."

After the public blowback, the coppers are in retreat:

A Kent Police spokesman said in a statement: "We are trying to trace the officers, who are reported to have made this comment. "From the circumstances described, it would not appear to have been necessary to advise the young girl that chalking a hopscotch grid may be criminal damage and illegal."

Link

(YouTube link)

For Mothers Day, HooplaHa put together a sweet compilation of people finding out that they're going to be grandparents. -via Jezebel

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful Mothers, Grandmothers, Aunts, and Mother Figures. May your Mother's Day be filled with love, laughter,

wonderful handmade cards,

and gifts.

May you also be lucky enough to have some sweet, sweet person clean all the goo off the inside of your minivan.   

A special thank you goes out to all the hardworking preschool and elementary school teachers who help make Mother's Day so special for us Moms. I applaud your creativity, patience, and follow-through. Without you my scrapbook would be empty. 

Teen Raymond Walter doesn't expect to live long because he has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes muscles to waste away. That's why, he said, that he's been on an accelerated course to accomplish as much as he can with his life. Starting with graduating from college with 3 degrees at 18 years of age:

“I don’t anticipate living as long as usual,” Raymond said. “In some respects, there is a lot of pressure to get as much done as I can. I don’t waste time. I skipped three years of grade school and to some extent I’ve continued my acceleration since I reached the university level. I finished my undergraduate economics course work in my freshman year. So as a sophomore I began to take graduate courses.”

Raymond is continuing his studies by pursuing two separate doctoral degrees in math and physics. Simultaneously, of course.

University of Arkansas Newswire has the full story: Link - via io9

The Childrens Television Workshop worked on a new show for a long time to ensure its quality before putting it on the air in 1969. Everything was finally in place, except the show still didn't have a name. A promo sketch shows Muppets mulling over possible titles, but the actual story was more frantic.

The name Sesame Street was not dreamed up by Muppets in a boardroom but the promo sketch does reference the dilemma the Workshop had in finding a name for the show. As producer Jon Stone remembers, “the name was set at the 11th hour and fifty ninth minute.” Early promotional materials simply referred to the show as a “preschool educational television show.” In early spring of 1969, the press conference announcing the show neared and producers had still not made a decision. “We were just frantic for a title,” said Joan Ganz Cooney. “Our press and publicity people were going nuts. How were they going to promote a show that had no name?”

But they managed to come up with the perfect name. Read what happened at the Sesame Workshop blog. Link -via Laughing Squid

If you give a kid your iPhone, she will ask you to use your camera. When you say okay, she will take dozens and dozens of pictures of other people's feet. Some will be her brother's feet.

Those feet will remind her of her feet and she will take dozens and dozens of pictures of her own feet.

Taking pictures of her own feet will remind her that she doesn't like wearing shoes and she will ask to take off her shoes. You will tell her no, but she will sit on the ground and take them off anyway. Your iPhone will be left laying in the dirt as you struggle to get the kids shoes back on.

Putting the shoes back on will remind the kid of feet and she will ask you to play with your iPhone.

Therapists didn't think much of Jacob Barnett's future. But his mother saw him demonstrate a prodigious memory, pattern recognition skills and an intuitive grasp of astrophysics:

One day, his mom took him stargazing. A few months later, they visited a planetarium where a professor was giving a lecture. Whenever the teacher asked questions, Jacob’s little hand shot up and he began to answer questions — easily understanding complicated theories about physics and the movement of planets.

Jacob was just 3-1/2 years old.

His mom realized that Jacob might need something that the standard special education curriculum just wasn’t giving him.

So Kristine decided to take on the job herself.

Now that's good parenting.

Link -via It's Okay to Be Smart

(Image: BBC)

Until the words emerged from my mouth, I never imagined that I would ever utter the phrase, "Is there baby poop on my face?"

Lunarbaboon smiles because he knows what's coming.

Link

If you want to discourage your teenager from texting while driving, make him or her drive a car with a manual transmission. A driver who has to work the gearshift constantly must stay focused. Seattle's NBC News affiliate describes how one local family uses this approach:

Riley's parents took notice of all those messages about the risks of using a phone while driving - too many sad stories. And while they trust their son, they're not taking any chances. 

Riley has a smart phone, but when he gets in the car, it goes into a compartment. Blue Tooth?  That might come later. But the car forces Riley to keep one hand on the wheel, and the other on the stick, especially in city traffic. 

Link -via Jalopnik

(Photo: cmonville)

How do you balance death, dying, and playdates? You don't. You will try and you will fail, but that's okay. Death might be fact of life, but there is nothing normal about it. 

As Mommies, many of us are taught to believe that life is all about balance. We keep strict calendars and schedules. Our time is filled juggling activities, playdates, doctors appointments, volunteering, kids' schoolwork, homework, outside-the-home work, inside-the-home work, workouts, and more work, work, work. Sure it's exhausting, but we mostly love it. Then one day someone close to you tells you that they are dying and your balance is shifted. All those balls you are juggling start to fall one by one. The funny thing is you won't notice how many balls you dropped until the whole expierence is over. How do I know this? My Dad died of cancer on November 10, 2011.

My Dad was diagnosed with cancer around May of 2008. That Mother's Day, he presented my sister and I with matching shiny necklaces. He said he wanted us to always have something from him. It was a gesture I will always treasure. 

During the first few years of my Dad's illness, I believed my Dad when he said he was going to get better. My Dad would drive himself to chemo and then to work. On days when the chemo made him feel really bad he would make my Mom drive him to work and pick him up. Even when they cut his throat open to remove lymphnodes he went back to work the very day he was released from the hospital. This was not a man who was going to let cancer kill him.

My Dad fought valiantly. The cancer was just stronger. 

In August of 2011, my youngest daughter turned 2.  The day of her birthday party was seared in my mind.  That was the day I knew my Dad was losing his war with cancer. I threw a small birthday party at my house. My Father looked thin, pale, and sad. He was also in a great deal of physical pain. I could see in his eyes that he knew this was the last family function he would attend.

From August 2011 till his death that November, I tried desperately to pretend things were normal. I didn't want the kids to suffer. I wanted their life to remain as orderly as possible. I was delusional. Nothing about those months were remotely ordinary or routine.

I planned and accepted playdates for the kids, but those playdates were abysmal failures. Playdates are supposed to be lighthearted events, with witty banter and minor complaints about significant others. They aren't supposed to include the rants of a mad women droning on and on about her Father's cancer. Intense discussions about death and dying are conversations you have with your therapist or best friend not with strangers. This kind of talk frightens people. Needless to say the playdate invitations stopped coming. The funny part is, I was at a loss as to why people didn't want to hang out with us. 

My Dad's lengthy hospital stay required us to drive hours daily to the city. Everyday after work, we would pack the kids in the car and head out to UCLA's Santa Monica hospital. My husband would drop me off at the hospital and take the kids to eat. Afterwards he would be pick me up, we would put the kids into pajamas and drive home. Going to see my Dad in the hospital was just part of our routine. I tried to pretend there was nothing unusual about it, but it turned out I was a terrible actress. My Dad often called me out on my fear. In a typical fatherly fashion he always tried to make me feel better. He would tell me that everything would be okay.

The children went to school, but all extracurricular activities went missing. Weekend outings to the zoo and natural history muesum were replaced by drives to visit Papa. The kids never complained. 

When my Dad was moved into a convelescent home in the Valley, I still visited everyday, but I started going alone. My Dad began to change. He became more fearful and more frightened about the road ahead. My protector started to look to me for protection. My Mom and I put on a brave face as we talked to him about being transferred home for hospice care. He would be more comfortable and he might even start to get better. I believed my own lies.

The cancer moved quickly once he went home. He was heavily medicated for the pain. He stopped eating. The last words he said to me were, " I love you." The next day he stopped talking. He lingered in a state near death for weeks.  

My kids would on occassion come to see my Dad. They would spend time playing in my old room as my Mom, the caregiver and I talked. We sometimes joked and laughed. We almost always cried. This strange existence became a familiar scene.

The amount of pain and suffering my Dad endured was shocking. I honestly thought that once he passed, most of the pain I felt would go away and be replaced by relief.  But it didn't. The pain actually got worse.

It took me well over a year to learn to accept my Dad's death. He was an amazing man and I still love him with all my heart. I miss him everyday, but I am so thankful that he was my Dad for 37 wonderful years. I am not okay with the fact that he died or how he died, but I know I will all be okay. He told me I will be okay, and I believe him. Everyday I am learning to deal with his passing a little better. How do I know? The playdate invitations are starting to come again.

Remember the first time you gave an olive to your child, and the emotional reaction that came over his face?

Screened at the TEDxSydney conference on Saturday The First Taste captures in delightfully slow motion the unfettered reactions of a group of children trying foods such as anchovy, Vegemite and olives for the first time.

Matt Gilmour, creative director at marketing agency Saatchi & Saatchi, says the inspiration for the film came from his two-year-old daughter, whose bewildered disappointment at a gherkin features towards the end of the film.

These kids were filmed at 500 frames per second, so we don't miss a bit of the melodrama. Link -via Metafilter

(vimeo link)

Junior Jedi defend the weak from bullies in Episode VII! Marley Gonzales, Kai Hale, and Liam Hale star in a trailer made by  Sam K. Hale for the next Star Wars film. This video won the award for Best Group Project at their elementary school's Movie Night event last month. And it looks like incredible fun, too! -via Geeks Are Sexy

Funny Baby Pacifiers over the NeatoShop

Parents, here's a quick way to clean your baby's pacifier and help it become healthier in one fell swoop. Or, make that in one big lick:

The researchers found that the 65 babies whose mother or father sucked on their pacifiers to cleanse them were significantly less likely to get eczema and asthma, two conditions caused by allergic reactions, than babies whose parents did not use the cleaning technique. [...]

To investigate the role of pacifier cleaning, Bill Hesselmar of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues analyzed data they had collected for a broader study about babies' allergies. Among the questions the parents had answered was what they did when their child's pacifier fell out of his or her mouth.

"We asked them how they cleaned the pacifier — if they rinsed them in water — and of course most of them did," Hesselmar says. But a lot of the parents did something else.

"They put it in their mouth, sucked on it and then gave it back to the children," Hesselmar says. "It's a quite common way to clean pacifier."

Rob Stein of NPR's Shots has the story: Link

Gross? It's better than eating boogers to boost your immune system!

Merrydale Elementary School in Baton Rouge, Louisana, has a problem: its test scores were abysmal. That in and of itself isn't a unique problem - many schools have low tests scores - but Merrydale's solution on how to raise its test scores is.

See, most failing schools try to improve its teaching staff to raise test scores, but the enterprising Louisiana school decided to do something else: import smarter students!

The proposal to move 100 gifted and talented students this fall from Glen Oaks Park Elementary, a C-rated school, to nearby Merrydale Elementary, an F-rated school, generated some heat Thursday. [...]

The higher-scoring gifted students would likely increase the school performance score of Merrydale from 71.2 to an estimated 77.5 under the shift, high enough to avert a state takeover.

Charles Lussier of The Advocate has the scoop: Link