But what giant stuffed animals stand head and shoulders over their plush progeny? For that, we reached out to a trio of toy experts: Kathy Gray and Miranda Gray-Burlingame, owners of LARK Toys, which has been named the Best Toy Store in Minnesota for the past 10 years, and Theresa Duncan, co-owner of Villa Villekulla Neighborhood Toy Store on Amelia Island in Florida. “Although many children have many stuffed friends, plush serves an important and valuable purpose in offering comfort and opportunities for imaginary play,” say Kathy Gray and Miranda Gray-Burlingame....

But getting some new wheels for your son or daughter can be tricky, as a lot of them seem to differ only aesthetically. We looked through what’s on the market now and found a solid variety of options. From branded models to exotic luxury cars to an impressively huge bulk pack, these are the best Hot Wheels to buy for kids. Or, honestly, for yourselves. Every product on Fatherly is independently selected by our editors, writers, and experts....

The Best Sex Positions That Won’t Wake the Kids The Stand and Deliver One of the most common culprits of noisy sex is a squeaky bed. If you’re looking to quiet things down, think about getting it on outside the sheets. Have your partner station his or her hands against the wall. You can enter them from behind and feel around from there. The About Face The inverse of the spooning position....

title: “The Best Telescope Images Released This Year” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Christine Gabriel”

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Bath Time SZJJX RC Submarine For the record, this finned toy submarine is not big. It measures only four inches and fits in the palm of your hand. But who cares? All the better for it to explore the bath tub on a rainy day. And explore it can. The remote-controlled toy submarine rocks twin propellers for forward and reverse movement, a streamlined aerodynamic design, and can dive to the bottom of the pool’s shallow section, assuming that’s no more than three feet deep....

If that all sounds just a bit too romantic, there are also practical reasons to opt for a wood-fired hot tub. They won’t explode your electricity bill, can operate without toxic chemicals, and don’t break down much thanks to the lack of moving parts. Wood-fired hot tubs eschew pumps, chemicals, and electric heaters for old-fashioned wood and water you simply replace before it gets dirty. They’re available at a lot of different price points, and some are even portable....

The Splatblaster looks like a typical toy gun. It’s about a foot long and brightly colored, with a pump action mechanism below the barrel and simple trigger operation. There’s also a scope attached to the top for a more precise way to aim. But instead of water or darts or toilet paper, the Splatblaster fires a specially formulated slime mixture. To get the gun ready to shoot, pour the included container of slime into the cartridge and slide it into the assembly on the gun....

In 1985 psychologist Dr. Joseph Fagan III appeared to find that infant intelligence was both knowable, measurable, and predictive of future intelligence. Up to this point, IQ tests for kids were for those who were five and older — the ones who could communicate well enough to offer answers to researchers. Psychologists such as David Wechsler used vocabulary testing, visual puzzles, math problems, and memory tests to provide an IQ score for elementary-age kids....

“My passion as a musician is just to play, same as Joe Gardner,” Archer told the New York Daily News. “And I think I found my spark, my love, if you will, my love for education, by accident.” Archer retired in June after 34 years as the music teacher at M.S. 74 Nathaniel Hawthorne in Bayside, Queens. He stumbled into education after accepting a part-time internship teaching band at a different Queens middle school....

Ryan’s World videos are a particular type of Internet hell. They include science instructions, personal family vlogs, footage from family trips, and woefully unfunny “skits” about the parents’ office antics. But the heart of the channel is the unboxing toy reviews, where Kaji opens and reacts to new toys. The videos where he opens giant eggs filled with unknown varieties of toys from brands like Transformers and Minions are among his most popular —his video of opening a Cars-themed egg has over a billion views and he so thoroughly conquered the surprise toy egg space that major retailers sell Ryan’s World-branded eggs today....

We recently got the Frame. And we are in love. Can you be in love with a TV? Yes, yes, you can. Let us explain why. TVs are not attractive. The Frame is about as handsome a TV as you can find. You can either mount it on your wall, or buy a stand for it. We opted to buy the stand, instead of mounting it, because we want the flexibility to move it around....

Older Dads’ Babies Might Be in More Danger at Birth Having a baby as an older dad has been linked to increased baby health risks at birth, including low birth weight, seizures, and a need for ventilation immediately after birth, a decade-long study out of Stanford University warns. The data, which considers more than 40 million births, these risks appear to become more severe with age — men who were 45 or older were 14% more likely to have a child born prematurely, compared to men over 50 who were 28% more likely....

This year’s Cabbage Patch doll is the Sony PS5, the new gaming console that came out in November and was immediately impossible to get. Retailers keep promising to restock the Playstation 5, especially for Black Friday, but the thing remains elusive. To wit: Walmart announced a restock last week, but at 3pm, shoppers reloaded their pages to find all the promised consoles gone within three seconds. Sigh. Which brings us to the most burning question: Is the PS5 worth it?...

In 2016, Spike Lee took the stage in front of the families of students enrolled in the Hung Tao Choy Mei Institute, a youth leadership program in D.C. He sat down for an interview about his career and how he came to have it. About halfway through, he settled on a simple, but resonant message: “Parents kill more dreams than anybody.” Lee was not saying parents actively pursue the destruction of dreams, but was speaking to a dynamic familiar to many both in and outside the African-American community....

The challenge and the beauty of this single piece of equipment is that by design, everything you do with it involves using your own body weight as resistance. So you’re unlikely to injure yourself the way you could by using a machine with too much weight. On the other hand, the pureness of these moves also makes it hard to fudge them — meaning you’re going to have to work for each rep....

Now, of course, some of this advice is more than welcome — and very helpful. Parenting is daunting and, as they say, it takes a village. There’s a big chunk of it, however, that’s complete nonsense, because not everyone is an expert and what worked for them might not work for everyone and also, sometimes, what that person said sounds super dangerous and deeply strange and what the hell, man?...

“He was totally irreverent, sarcastic and dry,” Kim Mulligan told Today. “He loved jokes that were ‘too soon.’ I think this obituary would fit into that category.” The obit starts off strong, with the sisters writing: “Thomas (Tomm) WJ Mulligan of Nashua has passed away at home in his recliner as he had threatened to for years.” It goes on to poke fun some of their father’s other quirks. One paragraph says, “His love of ‘Doctor Who’ was only surpassed by his love of not wearing pants at home....

It’s about the level of play you expect from an elementary school basketball game in a school gym — lots of kids standing around and, when they get the ball, heaving it at the basket and hoping for the best. One of the taller kids on the court, number 50, gets an offensive rebound under the basket. Instead of shooting it, he dribbles the ball over to a smaller teammate, number 0....

The six-foot-by-six-foot version (there is an eight-foot-by-eight-foot as well for $50 more dollars) comes with everything you need to get two sub-40-pound two to eight your old kids up and bouncing in minutes. The unit itself inflates in under a minute and while the fan is a little loud in an enclosed space it has an oddly soothing hum. Realistically, any noise the TUMBLE creates will be drowned out by the squeals of joy from your little ones rejoicing that they get to transport the fleeting usually-saved-for-birthdays fun of a rowdy bounce house session into a daily activity in your living room....

Nomad has been making some of the best and most beautiful tech accessories around for years, and we’ve extensively used almost every product they’ve ever made. For those who have fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, the Nomad Base Station Apple Watch Edition is as essential as it is stunning. Few wireless charging solutions out there support two devices at once, but the Base Station can charge your iPhone, Airpods (with wireless charging case), and Apple Watch at the same time, at full speed....