It's the hottest title out there! The bestselling novel that began as Twilight erotic fan fiction is becoming a popular source for offbeat baby names:

The list for this year’s most popular baby names is out and it looks like parents found inspiration from trendy sources that range from technology to "Fifty Shades of Grey."

Holding on to the number one spot for several years now is Sophia and Aiden, which was no surprise to Linda Murray, global editor-in-chief of BabyCenter.  What she didn’t expect were names from a certain libido-enhancing bestseller.

“Earlier this year, we heard moms telling us [Fifty Shades of Grey] is an aphrodisiac and helping them get pregnant,” Murray told NBC's "Today" [...]

Scientific and gadgetry names also did well this year:

It was a big year for space and technology-inspired names. Boys got names like Mars, while girls got Luna, Stella and Skye and Heaven. Apple rose 15 percent and Siri went up five percent for girls. Boys with the name Mac went up 12 percent, according to BabyCenter.com.

Link -Thanks, Pradeep! | Photo: Vintage

In a recent episode of 30 Rock, Tina Fey's real life daughter Alice Richmond played a young Liz Lemon during a flashback sequence, and from the looks of it she really takes after her mother!

Will little Alice be the next comedic sensation? Maybe in about twenty years...

Hit the link if you want to see a clip from the show where Alice made her comedy debut.

Link

Photo: TheLawleys/Flickr

It's about that time again- time to look back at the year's most commonly chosen (aka most popular) baby names!

Once again Sophia and Aiden top the list, but surprisingly there are very few popular celebrity baby names like Apple, Honey BooBoo or Jermajesty. Oh well, maybe next year!

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Everyone wants their kids to be smart and live up to their mental potential, but the kids on this list may be too smart for their own good.

From uncovering a nationwide donut conspiracy to disapproving of the pernicious influences of vapid celebrity culture, these youngsters have life all figured out, and they're not even finished with elementary school!

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This is Bandit, a robot specially designed by a team at the University of Southern California to interact with autistic children in a non-threatening manner. It can speak, change facial expressions, move around, play games, and make decisions on what to do next. In preliminary experiments with 15 autistic children, interactions with the robot for as little as five minutes can cause the child to become more vocal and sociable.

That may seem surprising, since robots are hardly known for warmth and sociability. Yet there is increasing evidence that kids with autism respond more naturally to machines than they do to people. Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, the director of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge in England, along with other autism experts, believes that robots, computers and electronic gadgets may be appealing because they are predictable, unlike people. You can pretty much guess what a computer is going to do next about 90 percent of the time, but human interactions obey very few entirely predictable laws. And this, Baron-Cohen explains, is difficult for children with autism. “They find unlawful situations toxic,” he says. “They can’t cope. So they turn away from people and turn to the world of objects.”

Read an extensive article about the robot therapist at PopSci. Link -via Fark

This is an Easy Bake Oven from 1915. Or something like it. It comes from before the Nerf Age of today. The primary difference is that this toy stove wasn't heated with a lightbulb. No, you had to start a fire in it:

The first miniature stoves appeared in the 1840s, made of heavy cast iron and modeled after full-sized cook stoves used in American kitchens. Later toy ovens imitated the range stoves that became popular in the 1880s. These fully functioning toy stoves had compartments to contain red-hot coals or wood, and later ones had operating electric or gas burners. These features gave the toys many of the same capabilities, as well as the safety hazards, of full-sized stoves. Production of cast-iron stoves continued up until the 1940s, when manufacturers instead dedicated their time and materials to the war effort. After World War II, a new generation of toy stoves emerged, made of plastic and tin. In 1963 the Easy-Bake Oven appeared on the market, replacing, once and for all, the dangerous, open burners of earlier stoves with a parent-friendly 100-watt light bulb in a contained cooking chamber.

Link | Photo: Strong National Museum of Play

(YouTube link)

Bharata Natyam was about 18 months old when she entertained the crowd at this dance recital in 2001. No, her performance was not planned to be this long, but the crowd called for an encore. She really gets going at about the eight-minute mark. Adorable!
 

This photo is from the Netherlands, dated 1933. The little cutie looks a bit apprehensive, but you know his whole family enjoys ice skating, so he's got to get into the groove sooner or later. Luckily, he has something to fall back on! Link

Is your little one a serious Whovian? Well then, maybe he or she would appreciate having a Docor Who themed party for their next birthday and if that's the case, you really should check out The Pixel Mom's post on just such an occassion for a few helpful ideas on throwing your own party.

I wish I was friends with her nine year old because that looks like one heck of an awesome party.

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Making popcorn on the cob the old fashioned way in the microwave. 

Every Tuesday I get a mystery box of organic fruit and veggies from a local farmers co-op. They never tell you what's going to be in the box. It's basically what's ever in season at the moment. My husband calls it my "Chopped" box in reference to that fantastic TV show where they give you all those crazy mystery items and 30 minutes to cook. I love that show.

Anyway, the box purchase is my futile attempt to get my kids, and ,okay, myself, to eat a little healthier. My husband doesn't really need help eating healthier, because he is happy to eat whatever you put in front of him. Give him veggies and he will gladly eat veggies. I am the bad one. I blame it on my Dad. This is what happens when you spend a large portion of your childhood growing up with a fabulously fun single Father. My comfort food tends to come in some sort of wrapper. I will miss you Twinkie <sob, sob, sob>!

Last week, along with weird green things and a boatload of persimmons, I found this bag of dried corn cobs in my box! First I said, " What the F*#%." I admit it, I thought it was some sort of Thanksgiving decoration.  So next I searched for the box newsletter. Turns out this is what popping corn looks like! Yippee! They gave me make-it-yourself organic junk food! Life is sweet.  

This stuff is actually pretty easy to pop. All you need is a kids lunch bag and a microwave. For extra fun I like to gather around a group of enthusiastic children who also share my love of popcorn. Thankfully I tend to have three of them on hand at all times.

 You put the popcorn in the microwave for about 2 minutes and watch the magic begin.

The bag didn't catch fire! The kids and I are getting excited! 

Behold our creation. Now I now if I was trapped on a dessert island with a microwave, a generator, some popcorn corn seeds, and a supply of paper bags I could survive. 

The kids are ecstatic. 

We did it! We made popcorn on the cob the old fashioned way in the microwave. Time for a movie. I love our Tuesday mystery box! 

Well, it's nice and warm in the womb, so you'd forgive the baby if it yawns. Using 4D ultrasound, scientists have captured the fetal yawn and suggested that it may be related to brain development:

Reissland and others used 4D ultrasound scans to capture a rapid sequence of images for eight female and seven male foetuses at 24, 28, 32 and 36 weeks of gestation. All the unborn babies were healthy and were scanned for 20 minutes. The researchers went through the images frame by frame and counted the yawns and other movements made by the babies. Over 58 scans, the team recorded 56 yawns and 27 other mouth movements. Yawns can be distinguished from other movements because a yawning mouth opens more slowly than it closes.

When the scientists analysed the images they found similar yawning rates in boys and girls. But, more surprisingly, yawning decreased steadily from nearly twice every 10 minutes in foetuses at 24 weeks gestation, to none at 36 weeks. The research appears in the journal Plos One.

"Unlike us, foetuses do not yawn contagiously, nor do they yawn because they are sleepy. Instead, the frequency of yawning in the womb may be linked to the maturing of the brain early in gestation," Reissland said.

"Given that the frequency of yawning in our sample of healthy foetuses declined from 28 weeks to 36 weeks gestation, it seems to suggest that yawning and simple mouth opening have this maturational function early in gestation."

Ian Sample of The Guardian reports: Link | The study at PLOS ONE

There's always an expert who knows more than you do, and is very willing to sell you a book to let you know how wrong you are. For parents, this has gone on for hundreds of years, and produced some rather strange advice …at least strange to our ears. Playing with a baby will spoil him. Never hug or kiss your children. Don't feed a baby at night. You should start toilet training at two months. A short child is the mother's fault. And babies should start eating like adults as soon as possible.

After World War II, commercial baby food producers as well as pediatricians drastically lowered the age at which they recommended babies start solids. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, much to the delight of Gerber and Beech-Nut, the average age at which parents introduced solids plummeted from 7 months to four to 6 weeks, according to various surveys. Sackett, the same guy who feared insufficient strictness would lead to socialist babies, was at the leading edge of this trend, writing in 1962 that breast milk and formula were “deficient,” and therefore babies should be started on cereal at 2 days of age. At 10 days, they could have strained vegetables, and by 9 weeks old, the little one would be eating “bacon and eggs, just like Dad!” Sackett also recommended giving babies black coffee starting at 6 months of age, to get them used to “the normal eating habits of the family.”

Read a roundup of the most outlandish advice from "experts" at Slate. Link

(YouTube Link)

Little baby Leo can't seem to shake off this cuteness thing, no matter how hard he tries he just keeps getting cuter...

Look at the cuteness he exudes as he's fighting off sleep, his parents don't stand a chance!

--via Videogum

Make sure that your birth plan includes a good selection of obstetrical firearms, such as this specimen from Borneo:

It was reputedly used in the 1800s during difficult labours, possibly to scare off evil spirits. The canon has sights located along the top. A touch hole for ignition is near the back.

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Jennifer O'Connell reports on a string of correspondence between the Hasbro toy company and her 6-year-old who noticed something odd about the game Guess Who?

 

Dear Hasbro,

My name is R______. I am six years old. I think it's not fair to only have 5 girls in Guess Who and 19 boys. It is not only boys who are important, girls are important too. If grown ups get into thinking that girls are not important they won't give little girls much care.

Also if girls want to be a girl in Guess Who they'll always lose against a boy, and it will be harder for them to win. I am cross about that and if you don't fix it soon, my mum could throw Guess Who out.

My mum typed this message but I told her what to say.

Well yeah, even though I am not familiar with the game, I also wondered why there would be such a disparity between male and female. Hasbro answered by trying to convince the child that the number of boys and girls in the game does not matter. O'Connell herself replied to the company's message, calling out Hasbro on not only their confusing explanation, but also:

Why is female gender regarded as a "characteristic", while male gender is not?

But you need to read the entire saga to understand how very confusing their logic is, including a second response from Hasbro in which they exercise damage control. Link -via Daily of the Day