You have admitted that this marvelous fruit of my loins is cute. That is insufficient. For such a child has never been born into the human race. Behold my child and wonder.

Link

We have all heard about snow days, but have you ever heard about a sun day? In the beautiful, but rainy state of Washington a spring day filled with sunshine is something to truly celebrate. 

The Bellingham Christian School in Bellgham, Washington has canceling school on May 2, 2013 because exceptionally nice weather is forecasted for the area. 

To celebrate an exceptionally nice day of the spring season, to promote positive school culture and just for fun, Bellingham Christian School has decided to cancel school due to good weather. 

Typically we cancel school for bad weather, so why not have some fun and cancel school due to fabulous weather?  For us Washingtonians, it’s just as significant we figure.  Our student body and staff are looking forward to a nice day to bask and play in the spring sun, which may end up happening May 2^nd, and if not then we will hope for May 3^rd.  We encourage the students to get outside and play.

If you believe the weather man, it's supposed to be a lovely 70 degrees and sunny in Bellingham. 

Brett Cihon of Q13Fox has more: Link

Photo: Rainbow-Sunglasses from the NeatoShop

A post at reddit asked the question "What is the creepiest thing your young child has ever said to you?" There are over 12,000 responses! And more are being added even now. Buzzfeed culled some of the weirdest to present to you, including a couple that hint at reincarnation. If you are intrigued by them, you might want to go back and check out the original thread for more creepiness. Link

My 6-year-old loves, loves art. Her favorite artist hands down is Vincent van Gogh, but after a recent trip to the LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), she discovered the work of Pablo Picasso and was inspired by his use of shapes and colors. What resulted was a collection of work known as My Micasso Family. 

Without further ado I present to you My Micasso Family by my favorite 6-year-old artist, the truly divine, Miss M. 

Self portrait 

Little Brother

Little Sister

Mommy

Daddy (aka Mr. Neatorama)

If you are ever in the Los Angeles area and are looking for something fun to do with kids, I highly recommend a trip to LACMA. LACMA has an youth program known as Arts for NexGen LACMA. This is a free youth membership program for anyone ages 17 and under. Membership includes free general admission to the permanent collection galleries and some of the special traveling art exhibitions. The best part is that each youth member can bring one adult guest for free.

Will in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air died on that basketball court in West Philadelphia. Alien and Blade Runner take place in the same universe. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are actually movies made within the Batman universe after Bruce Wayne's secret identity was revealed.

These are theories that fans have developed about adult television programs and movies. But inventive and somewhat crazy fans have also spun out hidden connections and explanations for children's television programs. Here are eight good ones.

1. The Count, a vampire, rules Sesame Street. He feeds upon the children and enslaves the adults. Here are some of the arguments that Mighty God King makes to advance this theory:

FACT. The child cast of Sesame Street changes frequently and widely. You rarely see the same kids on the show for more than three or four episodes.

FACT. However, the adult cast of Sesame Street changes very, very rarely.

FACT. Everybody seems to take the fact that a vampire is wandering a New York City street with surprising calm.

2. Alternatively, Sesame Street is actually an exploration of Plato's Republic and, specifically, his Allegory of the Cave. Here is part of the argument made by redditor theterrorofmuffins:

Plato uses the sun and light to represent knowledge, truth, and reason many places in his works -- light allows us to see objects for what they really are rather than in the darkness, and the sun is the source of all light. Plato also emphasizes that true reason is something humans can never fully obtain, but it is something we can work for -- Kallipolis, the ideal city he envisions, is a fantasy that we can move towards, but we can never achieve. As imperfect rational beings, we don't know how to get there.

"Sunny days, sweepin' the clouds away. Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?"

Now, what about the philosopher ruler who must pass on his wisdom in order to educate and enlighten the world not overtly, but subtly. In the allegory, the enlightened individual who saw the light of the sun can only achieve this through creating shadowy illusions on the cave wall. However, there are many other "puppet masters" making shadows on the wall for the prisoners to watch, and they deceive and conjure things untruthfully and without reason. The enlightened one, however, because of the inevitability of his rejection were he to convey his reason directly, must use this shadowy mode of illusory puppeteering to get his message across by meager demonstration.

And that is what Sesame Street is -- the shadows on the wall, demonstrations of how we might live in a harmonious society. It's given to us at a young age through television by it's enlightened creators so that we might adapt to and absorb its positive message. Thank you, Sesame Street.

3. Do you remember Gargamel, the archnemesis of the Smurfs? He has a spell that will let him turn Smurfs into gold--provided that he has at least six Smurfs. This is among his motivations to hunt them. At other times, he wants to destroy them just to rid the world of their happiness or to eat them. Why would Gargamel want to eat the Smurfs? Because their flesh is an addictive hallucinagenic. CoCoa explains:

The Smurfs live in houses made og hollowed out mushrooms, they hollow out the mushrooms by eating the insides of it.

Psilocybin is the chemical compund in mushrooms that causes hallucinations. [...] Garagamel wants to eat the Smurfs because they are pure concentrated Psilocybin.

Travis Jonker and his team work at an elementary school library. They had some old auditorium seats left over from renovations. They were functional as seating, but Jonker and his co-workers turned them into advertisements for works of children's literature. Click on Continue reading to view more.

Want to have a unique memento of your child's infancy? There are crafters on Etsy who sell keepsakes made with dried breast milk. The Detroit Free Press reports:

A couple purveyors, both moms, said in interviews that they hit on the idea as they sought out unusual keepsakes of their special bonds with their babies during nursing.

The two would not reveal their recipes for processing the milk, which is covered with a glaze or clear resin after it is plasticized or dehydrated, forming a clay-like substance that hardens over time when at least one method is used. [...]

“What a wonderful way to preserve the ‘liquid gold’ that we are only able to make for a certain period of time,” reads the product description for the latter. “This can be passed down for generations and what a fantastic gift to give to your child, the root of their survival.”

Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: MommyMilk

David Laferriere is a graphic artist. Every morning he draws a quick illustration on a sandwich bag for each of his children's lunch, photographs it, and posts it to Flickr. Each picture is different, which keeps his imagination in top shape. You can see over a thousand of them in his Flickr set! The snowman pictured here was for a cold day in January. Link  -via Buzzfeed

(Image credit: Flickr user D Laferriere)

For his son's 11th birthday, redditor crujones43 set up a treasure hunt. The boy had to read maps, collect clues at various locations, use a compass, solve puzzles, and hike through the woods to find a box containing real money. The fun of getting there was worth even more! Thirty pictures of the adventure are posted, in case you want to try something similar. Link  -via reddit

Raising a baby means getting advice from those who supposedly know more than you do -and in the 19th century, there were no shortage of experts to sell you a book. But even the most commonly-followed advice seems strange to us now.

From the day of birth, schedules and strict discipline were of deep importance. This baby was to interfere as little as possible with your life. Affection was to be restricted, with care instructions more fitting a ficus than a child. From 1916's The Mother and her Child by Drs. Lena and William Sadler: "Handle the baby as little as possible. Turn it occasionally from side to side, feed it, change it, keep it warm, and let it alone; crying is absolutely essential to the development of good strong lungs. A baby should cry vigorously several times each day."

As the child grew, regulated contact could be tolerated. "At the age of two weeks, the child may be systematically carried about in the arms 2 to 3 times a day, as a means of furnishing additional change in position," is the precise advice of Dr. JP Crozer Griffith in 1900.

That appears cruel and unnecessary to us today, but if you dig a little deeper, there are reasons that they seemed like a good idea at the time. An article at the Atlantic tells the reasons why such advice might not have been "stupid" after all. Link  -via Metafilter

Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.

Lina Medina was born on September 27, 1933, in the village of Ticrapo, Peru. A little over five years later, Lina was to become a world-famous celebrity. Lina Medina is the youngest documented mother in human history, giving birth at the age of five.

Lina was born with a rare condition called "precocious puberty." Precocious puberty is basically the early onset of sexual development. Most girls begin experiencing puberty around the age of ten (boys usually start a little later, around the ages of 11 or 12). Lina had experienced her first menstrual cycle at the age of eight months, although erroneous contemporary reports stated that the event occurred at the age of two and a half or three. She had fully developed breasts by the age of four.  

At five, she experienced a widening of her pelvis and had advanced bone maturation. It was at the age of five that Lina's midsection started growing massively. Her mother, Victoria, thought that her daughter was possessed by evil spirits. When she brought Lina to a hospital to be examined, the initial diagnosis was a possible tumor.

It was soon discovered, to the great shock and surprise of all, that she was actually eight months pregnant. When doctors did a full examination of Lina, they found that, although she was only five years old, she had fully mature sexual organs.

Dr. Geraldo Lozada became Lina's attending doctor, fully taking over the case. Dr. Lozada took Lina to a more advanced hospital in Lima to confirm the pregnancy diagnosis. The diagnosis was confirmed.

You might recall Jan von Holleben's photo series Dream of Flying, in which she placed children into surreal action sequences horizontally. Slovenian photographer Matej Peljhan uses the same technique for photos of 12-year-old Luka. The difference is that Luka has muscular dystrophy.

Due to the degenerative disease, Luka is unable to do even the most basic of everyday activities such as washing himself, dressing, and eating. His physical capability is mostly limited to tiny movements of his fingers, which allow him to move about in his electric wheelchair. He is also able to hold a colored pen, with which he can slowly turn his imagination into drawings in a notebook.

During a conversation he had with Luka, Peljhan learned that the boy wished to see himself in photographs walking, exploring, and getting into mischief. Rather than use some type of digital trickery to make this dream a reality, Peljhan decided to simply use a different perspective.

See Luka breakdancing, swimming, and even flying at PetaPixel. Link -via Laughing Squid

(Image credit: Matej Peljhan)

Motorists were surprised to see a child driving along the road in Lapeer, Michigan, early Saturday morning. According to Sgt. Andy Engster of the local sheriff's office, motorists boxed in the child and his car and called police. They found a 6-year-old who had taken the family car.

The boy had taken the keys off the counter at home and told the responding officer that he had never driven before and nobody had taught him how.

"He said he'd never even sat on his dad's lap to steer the car or anything," said Engster.

When police asked the boy why he took the car, he told them he was going to get Chinese food. He had hit a "no left turn" sign on Park and Pine streets near his home and, seeing the damage to the car, decided he needed to head to the dealer to get it repaired.

The unnamed boy's father was called to retrieve him. The parents had been asleep, and were unaware that the child had left the house. No one was injured. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Flickr usser Dave Dugdale)

Some mothers forgo modern obstetric facilities in hospitals and have births at home and assisted by midwives. The latest trend in this natural childbirth movement is called Lotus Birth. Participants don't cut the umbilical cord connecting the child to the placenta. Instead, they keep the placenta in a bowl and wait for the umbilical cord to wither away naturally. Madeline Scinto of the New York Post interviewed Mary Ceallaigh, a widwife and advocate for Lotus Birth:

Q: What are the best reasons to practice Lotus Birth?

There’s no wound created at the umbilical site, which lessens the chance of infection.

It allows a complete transfer of placental/cord blood into the baby at a time when the baby needs that nourishment the most. Babies’ immune systems are going through huge changes at a very rapid rate when they’re first born. Not disrupting the baby’s blood volume at that time helps prevent future disease.

The mother and baby benefit from having all the focused placed on bonding, rather than the common focus of "who's going to cut the cord, cut the bond?" Invading the natural process when there's a healthy mother and baby is likely to cause harm in some way seen or unseen.

The respect of all of what a woman conceives, not just part of it. [...]

Q: How do you eat meals, go to the restroom or run errands with a placenta attached to your newborn?

The cord usually dries and breaks off by the third day, so no mother would be running errands during that time anyway...hopefully not until at least the fourth week after giving birth!

In humid conditions, however, it may take up to 10 days for the cord to break, particularly in areas like Bali or the Australian rainforest. In these cases, the early weeks after giving birth is even more low key for the mother - and that can be a good thing....

While the placenta remains attached, it’s kept in a nice cloth, and the cord is wrapped in silk or cotton ribbon. Babies are left on a safe surface or with a caregiver while the mother goes to the restroom. For cuddling and nursing, the placenta pillow is kept near the mother and baby.

Link -via Inhabitots | Photo: Taxiarchos228

Part of Fred Rogers's routine on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was feeding his fish. After recieving a letter from a blind little girl, he was careful to verbally tell viewers when he fed them:

Dear Mister Rogers,

Please say when you are feeding your fish, because I worry about them. I can't see if you are feeding them, so please say you are feeding them out loud.

Katie, age 5

Katie's father noted that she really does cry. Mister Rogers included Katie's letter in an anthology of letters that he received from children. In it, he reflected:

Since hearing from Katie, I’ve tried to remember to mention out loud those times that I’m feeding the fish. Over the years, I’ve learned so much from children and their families. I like to think that we’ve all grown together.

Link -via Alyssa Milano | Image: WQED