Stuff I Like: Hot Wheels Car Maker

This is really cool. Why didn’t they have stuff like this when we were kids? That’s right – we grew up in the stone age, when toys were made from metal and wood.  Anyway, the Hot Wheels Car Maker from Mattel looks like it would be fun to play with even as an adult. About $40, for what you see here, but there’s a bunch of accessory kits to enhance your Hot Wheel-making experience.

Growing Up in an iPad World

For this little girl, a magazine is an iPad that’s broken. Watch.

Hyperbole and a Half: The Scariest Story

From Hyperbole and a Half, funny stuff about the monster fantasies we were scared of as kids, and our parents’ efforts to help us out:

There was a short period of my early life that was punctuated by truly unfortunate nightmares. I’d go to sleep feeling safe and warm.

Then I’d awaken several hours later and somehow be completely convinced that my closet was inhabited by fire monsters.

I’d flee to my parents’ room because, like most six-year-olds,  I believed that my parents possessed some magical ability to ward off homicidal, fire-breathing monsters that were easily eight times their size.

Inexplicably, the feeling of complete immunity to danger (laying between my parents) made me extremely energetic. I didn’t need sleep; all I needed was safety. And in the morning, despite having slept very little, I’d wake up feeling recharged and ready to rampage. Unfortunately, my parents were not high out of their minds on feelings of invulnerability, and they did need sleep.

Enjoy the rest at Hyperbole and a Half

Dude! This Kid’s Awesome

Check out Asher Bradshaw, seven year-old skateboarding wizard (he was six when this video was shot):

Read about him at Wired

If You Have (or ever had) Small Children, You Know What She Means

Kate Willoughby Hall gives her own version of the tale we all dread (or once dreaded, or will dread if the kids are just infants now): I’m just running into the store with the kids to pick up a few things. So, could they -just this once- not act like a circus monkey, or like they were raised by wolves?

All I was trying to do was prevent us from becoming one of those images (particularly because I wasn’t showered and my kid was dressed a little like a circus act) on People of WalMart. Just a few items and we’d be out the door, and surely since I had only 1/3 of my brood we should be out in no time.

No chance.

Kid 3 managed to throw her first crying fit approximately 60 seconds after we got into the door, pleading that she had to have one of those stuffed animals in the crane machine or she would surely die. Thank you, Toy Story for making said machines look so inviting that my children imagine their own live green dolls standing at the bottom waiting to be rescued chanting: The claw is my master. Using her request for impossible-to-grab-with-a-claw-toys as a reward for good behavior, I promised fifty cents for the claw game if she could be polite and keep it together while we picked up our items.

BAM! There’s the Halloween section, all green-and-black and five thousand three hundred sixty two bags of candy, all of which she wanted. And she is NOT wearing that scratchy Cinderella costume (that she begged me for last time we came) and she must have Ariel right now or she will break out in hives and need to be taken to the hospital. Kid 3 goes in cart.

Sure – it’s funny when it’s not you. Read the rest of her tale of woe at Richmondmom.com