Go "Trick or Treat" for Daddy...

I just can't wait for the day my daughter can go beg, I mean... go 'trick or treating', for candy. Not only it is fun for a kid to get all dressed up and get rewarded for it with candy, but as a parent I get to partake in eating the loot. Well, at least some of it. Sure, I can go buy it, but that's not nearly as fun. I can already picture myself in a few years anxiously asking her "sooo...what did you get?!"...and then her replying "MY CANDY!" as she runs for her room then slams the door. Exactly as I remember it from my childhood...

Star Wars Baby Costumes

First of all, it was cute to dress a baby up as a Star Wars character maybe back in the late 70's/early 80's when the movies were actually good. But why now? Don't support the bad... please!? Would you seriously dress up your baby like “Jiminy Glick in La La Wood”? There is no difference; both films were best never to be made. Yes, baby Yoda is cute but so are a million others things. If you must do Star Wars for Halloween, the dog probably wouldn't mind being a wookie.

R2D2 Baby

Craftster: Yoda Baby

Baby Einstein is crack for babies

I finally ripped open the Baby Mozart DVD we got for our baby shower and played it for our 3-month old daughter. What came next was totally unexpected. I was somehow expecting, like most baby/toddler videos, some talking fish in overalls sharing his cookie with a horse and then singing about it...or something similar. It was actually closer to a home video of random objects with bad canned synthesizer music. I first felt extremely ripped off, until I saw my daughter fixated on the screen. Yes, absorbed at 3 months old! I then felt admiration and a bit jealous as a creative that I hadn't come up with the idea. These people made millions selling their company to Disney a few years ago. I'm now thinking of recording the ceiling fan in our living room, my daughter loves staring at that. I wonder if it's worth at least 100K.

Baby Einstein

Predict your childs height..?

And this isn't a guy at a carnival who also guesses your weight, this is real science (well, the Canadian kind at least). I'm always a little curious as to how tall my 3 month-old daughter will be when she's "all growns up". But it's not like I'm obessed over it enough to go into a doctors office to find out. Anyhow, these researchers claim their test is accurate to within two inches for boys and 2.5 inches for girls. I bet the guy at the carnival has the same accurancy rate, except with him you get a stuffed animal too.

Medpage today: Simple Noninvasive Test Predicts Kids' Adult Height

Hey W.C. Customs - Pimp my stroller!

You know, I'm just waiting for the day my wife and I are walking through the Beverly Center (or perhaps Ontario) and while waiting for the elevator a "West Coast customs" pimped out stroller ride comes rolling next to our Bugbaboo. You know, maybe with the wheel spinners, gold trim, tinted sunshield maybe. I'm actually surprised nobody has come up with something like that yet?! Anyhow, seems like others have the same idea--

PIMP MY PUSHCHAIR

Pimp My Stroller

Martha Stewart...making houses?

Yes, that's right - houses like the kind people live in. And Martha Stewart is making 650 of them with her designing everything from the closets, lights fixtures, wall colors, to the floors. KB Home is building them in a upper class suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina and they're based on her own homes in Maine and New York. Maybe there's a neighborhood K-Mart to help furnish them. Upper class neighborhoods just love shopping there.

KB Home: Martha Stewart

MSNBC: Martha Stewart enters the world of real estate

TomKat Baby - from Outerspace!

Yeah whatever, its like we haven't heard it a million times already - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are expecting a little one sometime next year. And while everybody is still curious as to if it's a boy or girl some (like myself) have been wondering what kind of crazy stuff does a scientology birth consist of. This Flash animation short gives a pretty good answer to my questions-

TomKat Baby - from Outerspace!

18 Ways to Make a Baby

I'm into making baby's the old- fashioned way. For some that may not be an option, that's when science comes in handy. "18 Ways to Make a Baby" is actually a very interesting site on today’s world of assisted reproduction. It covers everything from fertility throughout our lives to cloning a baby - a subject that would even make Dr. Evil proud. When I was in school (years and years ago) I never paid any attention to this stuff in class. Making flipbooks on my textbook corners was much more interesting. But these days, it really is amazing stuff.

PBS Nova Online: 18 Ways to Make a Baby

A Boy named "Google"...

Only in Sweden can a kid be named Google, not get funny looks or get beat up in the schoolyard. Here in L.A. he would have trouble looking out a window (unless of course, he bought stock just when the company went public. Then he'll have plenty of friends to party with, like Anthony Michael Hall and Scott Baio). Apparently this isn't a new phenomenon, earlier this year it was reported that a Romanian couple named their kid Yahoo. But that was a hoax. I guess the Swedish didn't know that.

Google Blog: We get letters (3)

Snopes: Yahoo's My Baby?

Dress like Barbie - For real?

Yup, real Barbie clothes and not for little girls, but for teens and women in their 20's and 30's. And just like the real Barbie, money is no object. High-end designers like Anya Hindmarch, Nickel, Paper Denim & Cloth creating jeans for $176, sweatshirts at $140, handbags and jewelery sold at trendy places out here in L.A. like Fred Segal and other boutiques. Places a real Barbie would shop before going to the moon, to perform surgery, on a horse.

Reuters: Mattel launches Barbie clothes for women

CNN Money: Wanna dress like a Barbie?

Whoa! Blossom has a baby!?

Mayim Bialik (or as the world knows her-Blossom Russo) was in that 90's sitcom "Blossom”. She was kind of the 90's version of Punky Brewster, except she had a crazy brother Joey Lawrence (who by the way, random fact, almost hit my college roommate with his Lexus in a parking garage back in 1995). What I didn't know is that she has a Ph.D. in neuroscience! I wonder if its the funny hats that inspired her?

E! Online: "Blossom" Baby in Bloom

What?! Now they release the Video iPod...

My tragic story: a month ago Steve Jobs has a big party and the iPod Nano is released. All worked up with excitement, I go buy it (and the popular black one too). Then this happens...? I feel betrayed. Then I see a Mac "rumor" off one of the sites Apple tried to shut down earlier this year and they say, somebody told them that my Nano might have video capabilities?! I should hope so.

Think Secret (Rumor site)

Apple iPod w/Video

Coloring with O.J. and gangsta's

Most coloring and activity books when I was a kid were of primarily 80's cartoons or sitcoms, like Alf, Knight Rider, Transformers, etc. Things sure are different these day with these finds. I must admit though, there's nothing quite like coloring in Ice Cube's glock, Dr. Dre's bling or O.J. infamous bloody glove.

O.J. Simpson Colring and Activity Book (Free download)

Gangsta Rap Coloring Book

Smurfs living a worn-torn village?

UNICEF is trying to get our attention these days. Maybe because funds are getting low, or other world events such as Earthquakes, Floods, Hurricanes, Tsunami's just seem to be taking center stage. In Belgium, their newest campaign features those relatively peaceful 80's Smurf's with their village getting carpet bombed and baby Smurf crying for his dead mother, Smurfette (Which in reality couldn't be Smurfette, because she was sent in as Gargamel’s evil spy with the intent of destroying the Smurf village, then changed. Unless of course - she was pregnant…by Gargamel?). All this for the sake of Africa! If I were a kid and saw that, it would kind of freak me out. Instead, they should have chosen something closer to Belgium adult’s hearts, like Baywatch.

UNICEF

Smurf's Official Site

Yet another study on SIDS and...weird heads?

Today the American Academy of Pediatrics released another yet study to scare parents, and of course I had to read it. With caution, afraid I was doing something wrong and the police were just waiting to ram down my door. It all made sense, pretty common things but then I came across this part that freaked me out "Avoid development of positional plagiocephaly (flat back of head).... Avoid having the infant spend excessive time in car-seat carriers and “bouncers.” " What?! I don't want my little girl to have a "Flat back Head". I never thought of that? Is this a common thing? I've never noticed other baby’s with this problem but then again, they're always in car-seat's, laying down, or bouncers!? It's going to be hard enough when she's a teenager when she starts blaming me for breathing! Now this takes some serious thought...

American Acedemy of Pediatrics: AAP REVISES SIDS PREVENTION RECOMMENDATIONS

Human's in a million years will look like...?

Do you ever wonder, while waiting in line or driving in traffic, what human beings will evolve to and look like in 1 or 100 million years from now? I do while looking at my 3-month-old reflecting family features she has, what she will be like when she's my age, and weird stuff like that. Unlike today, people just a century ago only lived until about 45 years old, were pretty short, and died from strange stuff like 'smelling horse manure' or something obtuse like that. Will we all look like Yoda, Soap stars, or polluted Morlocks eating the beautiful people who live on the surface? Or maybe just the same but with great hair like the guys in Rogaine commercials...

MSNBC: Before and After Humans

Pimped out PSP case: only $35,000

You've got to be kidding! Don't be surprised if you see this on an extravagant Christmas list for one of Snoop Dawg's 12 or 18 kids. This Sony PSP case is made out of alligator skin, 7 carats of black and yellow diamonds, all topped off with a pound of gold. It also makes a perfect accessory for the Escalade.

BabyPhat

EURweb: Diamonds from Russell & Kimora

Child-developmental psychologist and his Alien roomate

How would you like this guy to have been your kid's psychologist? Jonathan Reed, a former child-developmental psychologist (why was he one in the first place?) claims one day he "was hiking with his golden retriever in a forest in Seattle...then his pet was being torn apart by a "gray" -- an alien being with an elongated head, smelling of rotting fruit." But wait! There's more - he continues "he took the alien home and lived with it for nine days in which it communicated via telepathy and was able to pull thoughts from his mind." You know, I believe him. I think aliens work and gather at the nearby DMV. There's no other explanation for that smell.

Yahoo News: UFO-spotters tell tales of the extra-terrestrial

Independent Online-Enthusiasts gather for world alien congress

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes-Expecting?

In Hollywood, like presidents, you have to keep your popularity ratings up. With either good or bad news. I can’t think of one person in this town who thinks that this whole ‘relationship’ is real. I mean with the Oprah confessions, the magazine cover with Katie in a wedding dress, the staged make-outs?! But as to whose publicist came up with this stunt - I bet they're going to get some Christmas bonus this year. What does Katie get? Well she’s probably looking to a once unknown named Nicole Kidman who curiously became huge hit after her marriage with Tom. Her dreams to follow the same footsteps of stardom except for the fact Nicole can actually act.

E Online- Cruise, Holmes: Pregnant

Diapers, Costco and free food samples.

My wife and I never caught on to the whole Costco (Bj's, Sam's Club) phenomenon. Sure we've been to one a few times with friends/family, but never had a need for 3 gallons of Ketchup, or a case of Del Monte green beans. Until I found out how much cheaper diapers were there. And I'm not talking about a few pennies per diaper, but a real deal. Before out little one was born we were set on a diaper service or the costly least environmentally destructive Seventh Generation diapers from Whole Foods, but when you go through loads of these a week, it really adds up. Besides, where else can you get samples (and a pretty good portion size) of nachos, teriyaki shrimp skewers, and French toasts sticks?

Costco

Seventh Generation Chlorine Free Diapers

Bugabooo By: at $2000

How do you take an already pretty swanky expensive stroller and make it even more exclusive? You get some Dutch fashion designers to create their version of it, mark it up nearly $1200 over the base model, and then release only 1000 of them. As a designer myself, I think you have to be a pretty brave parent to stroll around in a bright white stroller. Obviously their first designer doesn't know anything about who these strollers are designed for-children. And they don't fair well with white, not even one that costs $2000.

Bugaboo By: