My youngest two are 9 and this week they had a Scholastic Book Fair. One thing that they've found is that, from time to time, there is Disney manga at the book fair from TokyoPop. Which, by the way, there were no comic books at Scholastic Book Fairs when I was a kid, but I digress.
As my youngest like Lilo and Stitch, they picked up this volume called "Stitch: Best Friends Forever!" Short version: It's cute.
The story has Stitch's ship crash landing in an island in Okinawa. While there, Stitch becomes friends with a local girl named Yuna and goofiness ensues. This single volume has self-contained stories in each individual chapter of Stitch getting into silly / funny situations with an elementary aged girl and her friends.
This is, however, a compilation volume. There is a full, two volume Stitch manga that was previously released. "Best Friends Forever" picks some fan favorite chapters and mashes them together in what, at times, feels like no particular order. It's not bad, but it does give you kind of whiplash from time to time
Long story short, it's a taste of the Stitch manga. If you enjoy it (which we did), then it's worth checking out the full series (which I probably will with my kids).
It's a cute, all ages manga about Stitch and a different friend in Japan. If you like cute kid's manga, check it out.
This weekend I went to a band trip with my 12 year old as a chaperone. It started with band performances, ended with them (and me) at an amusement park all day.
I met a bunch of Middle Schoolers who were friends / acquaintances with my daughter. They referred to me as "cool," "legendary," "icon," and one said I was "an icon on par with Madonna." But...but why?
I think about that day and all I can think is that I'm an adult, a parent who was willing to engage with these kids. I talked with them about music, their hobbies, anime, video games, whatever they wanted to talk about. I listened and interacted. Apparently, that's enough to make me an icon.
It feels very basic. But, the fact that just this level of interaction felt out of the norm for them from their friend's parents that it made them call me an icon, I feel that says more about the other adults in their lives than it does about my awesomeness.
Amazing how my kids now have professional skills that I've never been near. Junior can write code , design electronics and translate from Japanese into English and Swedish. Juniorette can run a kitchen full time that cooks for 150 people, as well as work the floor and back stage of a major grocery store.
Can anyone recommend a kid-friendly painting app for iPad? Something like Kid Pix? Kindergarten/elementary age. No ads, no in-app purchases, no commercial characters (ideally).
I used to be a parent who when out in public felt like I had to perform a middle ground between my kid and social norms.
Now I am a parent who when out in public role-models the accommodation, flexibility, low-demand, and calm that I would like other people to practice around my kid - or any kid. Instead of trying to appease society, I'm showing society how it can do better.
It may not seem a big deal in the world, but this personal change is nothing short of revolutionary.
A month ago I spent an hour or two going through all of our winter hats, gloves, coats, scarves, and misc crap that had gotten thrown into them. I sorted everything into bins, and labeled them "hats", "gloves", and "buffs/scarves".
Two weeks after I did that, I noticed that someone had put gloves in the hats bin, and vice-versa. The next day I noticed that the buffs/scarves were in with the other two. I mentioned it to my wife, and she shrugged.
@Andres4NY Another trick: have less of each? At home we're only 3, I only use gloves, and I keep them in my current jacket, so the two kids do no spend more than 15s finding the missing globe or their bonnet.
@mdione I keep a pair of gloves for each kid in my winter coat.. because I'll pick one of them up from school, and inevitably we'll have the following conversation: "My hands are cold" "put on your gloves" "i don't have them" "you went to school with them, did you check your backpack?" checks backpack "I can't find them" "okay, here, I have an extra pair in my pocket"
According to @Joysauce, fewer women in East Asia and Southeast Asia are choosing to have children — Taiwan has the world's lowest birth rate and South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Japan aren't far behind (or ahead, depending on your point of view). Jiaying Grygiel takes a look at the societal and economic reasons for these steeply falling birth rates. “People are making a perfectly rational decision about childbearing under the circumstances,” says Stuart Gietel-Basten, a professor of social science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Unbelievable curbside find today on my way home from a lovely solo breakfast. I’m sure 2yo will like it fine, but this is the Barbie Dreamhouse of my dreams.
The neighbor who helped me load it up said it’d been sitting there for a few days, but I couldn’t bear to leave it for 10 minutes to go home to get a different vehicle in case it got snatched up by someone else. Turns out I didn’t have to!!
Age restrictions on books for toddlers/small kids are not to protect the kid from the potentially disturbing content, but to protect the book from being torn apart 😅
@TarkabarkaHolgy The thing about Bandit is in the first season he was competent, a caregiver, all that stuff that gave the show a good reputation. But later he became more and more like the stereotype, beside his hyper-competent ultimate authority stereotype Mum. He even picked up a weight problem, which is weird because they're all identical rectangles. But the reputation remained.