Category: Kids & Cute Stories

Pajama day

Mack, official oldest grandchild of NewMexiKen, was nervous. According to his mother, it was “pajama day” at Little Lambs pre-school. That meant that all the five-year-olds were supposed to wear a favorite pair of pajamas to school. In his pajamas in the car on the way however, it felt a little uncertain.

To alleviate the uncertainty — which by then had started to settle into her own mind — his mom began to suggest other “clothing days” there might be. In the joking that followed, Mack suggested — as 5-year-old boys will — “underpants day.”

His mother assured him there would be no day when the kids just wore underpants to class — at least not until college.

Lady and the Tramp

NewMexiKen has been watching Lady and the Tramp — and watching it and watching it and watching it. I’m certain we’ve seen the scene with the Siamese cats (Si and Am) at least a dozen times.

And, you know what? After 50+ years, it’s pretty darn good. It has some typical Disney pathos and a touch of anxiety for the little ones a few times (when mean dogs enter the picture), but considerably less than in the Disney animations of Grimm fairy tales. And much less of the singing and nonsense that I didn’t like in Disney films when I was five-years-old — and still don’t.

If you’ve got young ‘uns to entertain (under 5 especially), I recommend Lady and the Tramp. It’s good.

And a word about Verna Felton, the character actress who was a voice in many Disney animations — a matriarchical elephant in Dumbo, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp. I recognized her voice and did a little research. As I remembered, Ms. Felton played with Harry Morgan in an early fifties show, December Bride — and its 1960 spinoff Pete and Gladys. She died in 1966, but Morgan kept Felton’s photo on Sherman Potter’s desk on the M*A*S*H set to portray Mrs. Potter. Nice.

OK parents, what would you do?

Boy, 12, gums up pricey DIA artwork

You might think that a museum wouldn’t have to tell visitors not to stick chewing gum on the art. But you would be wrong — as the Detroit Institute of Arts just found out. At the DIA on Friday, a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay,” damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum’s collection and a landmark picture in the artist’s output. Though the picture, acquired by the DIA in 1965 and worth an estimated $1.5 million, is expected to make a full recovery, the episode reinforces just how vulnerable priceless works of art remain when displayed publicly — and what can happen when common sense takes a backseat to impulsive delinquency.

Click the link to see the artwork and read more.

Kids Might Tune In to This Cartoon Billionaire

The Oracle of Omaha is Tinseltown’s newest animated hero.

But, at least in Warren E. Buffett’s crystal ball, he still has no future here.

“I can’t afford to go Hollywood,” he said. “There’s no money in this stuff.”

If anyone knows the value of a dollar, it’s a guy with 40 billion of them. Which is why the world’s second-richest individual decided to become a cartoon character to teach children financial responsibility.

Working pro bono, Buffett will play himself in an upcoming 13-part DVD series, “The Secret Millionaire’s Club,” produced by Burbank-based DIC Entertainment Corp. The 75-year-old grandfather plays an animated version of himself who offers his wisdom with the kind of down-home delivery that has made him a folk hero to investors.

Los Angeles Times

If he wants any of NewMexiKen’s grandkids to watch he’ll need some light sabers or a backpack with a map.

Six Breakfast Cereals Argue Why They Should Replace Cheerios as the Preferred Finger Food for Babies

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Excuse me if I’m being presumptuous, but I assume that you, as a parent, are aware of the declining literacy rate in this country. This can be blamed on what I call O-verexposure: too many tots feeding on a single letter, instead of on the entire alphabet banquet. I offer the glorious triple-pronged E, the delightfully asymmetrical Q, even the commercially co-opted X. These are the building blocks of words, communication—dare I say, of civilization itself.

That, of course, would be part of the argument made by Alpha-Bits.

Thanks to V. for the link.

The Benefits of Bozo

From Slate, Proof that TV doesn’t harm kids. It’s a brief article worth reading but here’s the key finding:

They looked for evidence that greater exposure to television lowered test scores. They found none. After controlling for socioeconomic status, there were no significant test-score differences between kids who lived in cities that got TV earlier as opposed to later, or between kids of pre- and post-TV-age cohorts. Nor did the kids differ significantly in the amount of homework they did, dropout rates, or the wages they eventually made. If anything, the data revealed a small positive uptick in test scores for kids who got to watch more television when they were young.

Thanks to Veronica for the link.

A father’s ambitions for his child

Still, I thought, maybe Starbuck would benefit from leniency. If we let him hide under the dinner table and gobble Pez from his Batman dispenser, he might become one of those superhumanly cool kids who succeed at everything. He’ll be a running back and class president; he’ll snowboard Whistler and start a band; every summer he’ll build houses with Habitat. Eventually, he’ll practice medicine with Doctors Without Borders, where he’ll meet a beautiful daughter of France, and together they’ll run a clinic and raise babies in Paris while he writes his trilogy on the human comedy, in which there will figure largely a beneficent, wise father.

Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Heroes and super heroes

Mack, official oldest grandchild of NewMexiKen, watched much of the Rose Bowl with his mother Wednesday night. Here’s the story as told by his mother, Jill:

The honorary marshal came onto the field, before the game, to flip the coin. I saw that it was Sandra Day O’Connor.

I said, “Oh, Mack, that is one of my heroes.”

“Why?”

I referenced conversations we’ve had in the past, “You know how we’ve talked about how, for thousands of years, men got to be in charge of everything and women didn’t get to do lots of things?” (Mack has a fairly solid background knowledge in this stuff, at least for a five-year-old boy.)

“Yes, like how they couldn’t vote or have a house or do lots of jobs?”

“Right. Well one job they didn’t get to do was be a judge. A judge gets to decide the laws for all the people to follow. It’s a really important job. Well, that lady was the first woman who got to be a judge. So she is one of Mommy’s heroes.” (Not strictly accurate, I know.)

Mack looked at me for a minute, then said, “Then she is one of my heroes, too.”

My heart melted. I put my arms out for a hug, so proud of my brilliant, sensitive child.

He continued, “Yes. Also Batman.”

Most popular toys of the last 100 years

1900-1909 Crayola Crayons
1910-1919 Raggedy Ann Dolls
1920-1929 Madame Alexander Collectible Dolls
1930-1939 View-Master 3-D Viewer
1940-1949 Candy Land
1950-1959 Mr. Potato Head
1960-1969 G.I. Joe
1970-1979 Rubik’s Cube
1980-1989 Cabbage Patch Kids
1990-1999 Beanie Babies
2000-Present Razor Scooter

Here are the details from Forbes, including other notable toys of each decade.

Grandpa missed the show

Part of my plan for being in Virginia this past week was to catch Mack, now five, in his pre-kindergarten Christmas pageant. He had a major role, that of the Bethlehem innkeeper. Alas, best laid plans— last Thursday’s performance was postponed when school that day was cancelled due to snow. (Don’t get me started on the Washington area and weather cancellations.)

Anyway, the performance was rescheduled for this evening about the time I was arriving home 1,900 miles away.

“We have so much to do. The inn is full. We had to turn people away.”

Remember those lines. The next generation’s Brando got his start tonight, even without Grandpa there to watch.

Good for each other

From a story in the Los Angeles Times:

The elderly woman, white hair brushed and tidy, peach lipstick matching her velour jogging pants, isn’t quite sure why she goes to the adult day-care center in Van Nuys, and can’t remember how long she’s been going there.

“My memory isn’t so good anymore,” says Irene Overlee, 88, of North Hollywood.

But she remembers every word of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and that’s all that matters right now to the half-dozen wild-haired toddlers in the center of a circle made up of Overlee and four other seniors. The children are dancing and clapping as the seniors chant the spider ditty — until, on cue, Overlee and the others reach the line about the rain coming down. In unison, they upturn the contents of a paper bag, causing crumpled, colorful tissue paper to rain down on the floor.

The toddlers squeal with delight. They want to do it again and again. They pick up the papers and refill the bags held open by the five senior citizens, their fun undiluted by the fact that the adults around them have canes, walkers, hearing aids and, in some cases, mild to moderate dementia. These things are all very familiar, for the seniors and youngsters attend day care at the same site.

Why this idea has been so slow in coming in our society is beyond me.

Key fact:

Today, 45% of grandparents live more than 200 miles from their most distant grandchild, according to a survey by AARP. Not coincidentally, that’s exactly the percentage of grandparents who say they don’t see their grandchildren often enough.

NewMexiKen lives more than 1,000 miles from my nearest grandchild. What’s wrong with this picture?

Redshirting Your Own Kids

The SportsProf raises some interesting questions. This is just a short excerpt:

Many parents don’t want their kids — especially boys — being the youngest in their grade at school. Are there disadvantages to being the oldest kid in the grade? For example, will the kids of average age write off the oldest kid as less able because if he’s that old and in your grade, mustn’t there be something wrong with him? Or do kids really not think about that type of stuff at all, but rather whether someone is good and nice — or not? And are the decisions made because of a concern about the kid’s overall welfare, or merely about his ability to compete and earn a college scholarship?

What would you do? Suppose you’re not a good athlete and neither is your spouse and your kids haven’t demonstrated any noticeable athletic ability. Suppose one has size and one has speed, and people in your town are putting kids on travel teams at 8 and getting caught up in all sorts of extracurricular sports programs. You hear about kids getting into better colleges, getting better aid, with perhaps some of them getting full rides to a school. What do you do?

The way we were

An interesting take on children’s literature by a Brandeis professor in The Boston Globe: The way we were.

Our adult delight in children’s literature is not an innocent delight. As adult readers of children’s stories, we’re aware, as children are not, that their robust confidence in the world, at least while they are enraptured by a story, is ephemeral and fragile, endangered by every step they take toward adulthood. For us, the child becomes almost another character in the story, responding with a wonderfully heedless delight or dismay to things as unreal as the adult world she imagines. But we know what’s coming, how evanescent the child’s world is-and we feel for her what she cannot possibly feel for herself.

Thanks to Veronica for the link.