Barbara Soper of Rockport, Michigan, gave birth to her first child on August 8, 2008 -- that's 08.08.08. Her next one came on 09.09.09. And her third child was born a few days ago on 10.10.10.

Despite the neat pattern of their children's birthdays, the Sopers insist it was not planned.

The Rockford, Michigan, couple's first child arrived exactly on the couple's due date. But the second baby was born with induced labor ahead of the Sept. 20 due date.

The latest came early because Barbie Soper's doctor wanted to prevent potential health complications. The original due date was Nov. 4.

Link | Photo: AP

Autumn de Forest began painting at a notably talented level by the age of 4. Now, at the age of 8, she's auctioning paintings for tens of thousands of dollars a piece:

“Elephant,” it turned out, was not a fluke. Autumn’s parents bought her museum-quality paints and canvases “to see what would happen,” Doug said, “and in very short order a prolific kind of blossoming happened, and the canvases started getting bigger and bigger.”

In fact, Autumn’s canvases are now so large — typically 4 by 6 feet — that she has to paint them on the floor. Doug built her a sort of wooden bridge so she can sit on it and paint the middle of the canvas. (Autumn is slightly taller than 4-foot-2 and weighs slightly less than 50 pounds.)

Link via Pop Crunch

A 17-year old boy in Bridgeville, PA who had just passed his driving test immediately crashed his car into the DMV while still in the parking lot:

Township police Sgt. Brian Halbleib told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the accident happened when the teen pulled into the parking lot of the driver license center to drop off the man who had administered the test.

Halbleib said the teen thought the car was in park but it wasn't.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ODD_NEW_DRIVER_ACCIDENT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-10-13-20-04-06 via Jalopnik | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user gallicious used under Creative Commons license

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Mompetition is a blog that makes fun of the tendency of some mothers to see parenting as a competitive sport. If you meet a such a person, you'll know right away because she'll begin an immediate game of oneupsmanship. The above video is typical of such conversations.

Link via Jockeystreet

Jennifer, a college student in Hawaii, snapped this picture of her nephew. His hair has been shaved so that he looks like Aang, a character in the anime series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Link via Great White Snark | Image: Nickelodeon

The blogger responsible for Booturtle made a fairy princess costume for her daughter and added in a bit of the dark side:

Princess Fierce brought me a broken toy crown that I took apart, painted green, added purple glitter sparkles and mounted to the mask. I redesigned the straps to the mask to be purple and green ribbon from the sides and one piece with loops across the top. Allowing me to tie a bow through the loop and basically make a net that sat on her head. She was ecsatic. The mask wasn't too tight but yet did not slip. She wore it comfortably for most of 8 hours.

The tip of her wand is shaped like a Death Star.

Link via Geekologie

Would you like for your baby to look like a deformed, three-armed mutant? Of course you would! Instructables user canida made such a costume for its* baby. Canida writes:

While we wanted to be subtle, this was almost too subtle - she wore the costume all day, and hardly anyone noticed! But when they finally detected a problem, the responses were excellent.

Link via Bits & Pieces

*user profile lists canida's gender as "robot".

I've encountered parents that purchased the web domain name for their child's name when s/he was born. This way, no cybersquatter can show up and take it. But other parents go ahead and create full social networking profiles for their children:

According to a recent international survey of 2,200 mothers, 81% of children under the age of two currently have some form of online presence — ranging from photos uploaded and shared by their parents, to a full-fledged profile on a social networking site. A full 92% of children in the U.S. have an online presence by the time they are two, compared to 73% in western Europe.

Link via Buzzfeed | Photo by Flickr user Iragerich used under Creative Commons license

Fujitsu has developed robot teddy bears that respond to human behavior. Serkan Toto reports from a trade show that demonstrated them:

I was surprised how responsive the robots actually are. It takes just a split second to detect the presence of a human being (the bears have a sensor for that built into their nose) and after that, it’s possible for them to interact and “communicate” with humans through face recognition and constant tracking of the position of the human conversation partner.

Depending on how you behave, the bear reacts differently: it laughs, waves its paws, moves its feet etc. (the robot are hundreds of pre-programmed patterns of behavior). The bears are equipped with 12 joints, multiple touch sensors, microphones, speakers, and accelerometers.

Link

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The Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History is holding a video contest that invites people to express how scientific discovery impacted their lives. The prize is a trip to the Rose Center in New York City. This video shows one young applicant demonstrating a remarkable knowledge of astronomy. Like Kyle VanHemert of Gizmodo says "It's like a supernova of cute."

http://www.amnh.org/rc10/ via Gizmodo

Beatrice Delap, 9, of Greenwich, UK, is a big fan of The Pirates of the Caribbean films. She wrote to Johnny Depp, the actor who played pirate character Captain Jack Sparrow, asking for his assistance in a mutiny at her school. Depp showed up in person as Sparrow and did so:

He made the one-off trip after nine-year-old pupil Beatrice Delap wrote to the star asking for help staging a 'mutiny' against the teachers, as he was filming at the nearby 18th century Old Naval College.[...]

The school was told just ten minutes before that Depp would be arriving and two blacked-out cars swept through the school gates.

An onlooker said she heard the most 'incredible screams of joy' as the actor, in full make-up, then entered the school.

Link via Sci Fi Wire | Photo: Cavan Pawson

My toddler is only now putting together very simple sentences, so I have sometime to prepare myself for the questions that kids ask that parents aren't sure how to handle.

Anyway, Uncle of the blog Say Uncle offered this story about his four-year old son, who had a question about his genitalia:

Got Junior out of the shower and then put The Second in the tub. I was sitting around when my wife walks in and says: You need to talk to your son. He has a question about his balls.

I sat there for a moment pondering what exactly a four year old could ask about his junk. And I settled on things like: What are they for? Why are they fun to play with? Why does it hurt when I get hit in them?

You know, typical ball stuff. Because, frankly, I had no idea what he was about to ask.

I walk in to the bathroom and he’s in the tub checking himself out. And I say Your mom said you had a question about your dudes?

I won't spoil the rest. But Uncle closes with this salient fact about parenting:

With kids, you mentally prepare for something, and it never goes the way you prepare for.

Link | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user vomsorb used under Creative Commons license

Sesame Street is coming to Nigeria, and the producers have tailored it to meet local public health needs. To address the rising tide of HIV infection in that country, they've created a HIV-positive character:

The show stars Kami, a girl muppet who is HIV-positive, has golden hair and a zest for adventure; and Kobi, an energetic, furry, blue muppet whose troublesome escapades help others learn from his mistakes.

In a country with a population of over 150 million -- where, according to the CIA World Factbook, nearly half are under the age of 14 -- the show will address some of the biggest challenges faced by young people in the region: AIDS, malaria, gender inequality, religious differences -- as well as many positive aspects of Nigerian life. In the case of Zobi, this is characterized by an obsessive love of yams -- a staple food in the Nigerian diet.

Link via Super Punch | Photo: Sesame Workshop

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Luke Geissbühler and his 7-year old son, Max, sent a camera attached to a balloon up into very low earth orbit:

Their so-called spacecraft was a helium-filled weather balloon rated to burst at 19-feet in diameter with a high-definition camera placed in a capsule handmade out of Styrofoam.

They attached a parachute to the payload to bring the camera safely back to Earth.

The balloon rose 19 miles into the stratosphere before rupturing, briefly experienced weightlessness, and then plummeted to the earth. It landed about 30 miles north of the launch site.

The elder Geissbühler estimates that the entire project cost just $400-500.

Link via Slashdot

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A Story Before Bed is a website that allows parents with webcams to upload videos of themselves reading bedtime stories to their children, which the children can access when desired. High-resolution images of the books' pages flip across the screen to create the impression of a real mutual reading experience.

The library of available books has continued to grow, and now the site has begun featuring authors of children's books reading their own stories. This series begins wtih Oliver Chin's Baltazar and the Flying Pirates, but promises to include more.

Link | A Story Before Bed