Are they funny? Are they creepy? Are they a little bit of both? Yeah--that last one. Pictures of manbabies have surfaced on the web, and they're a hit. Ah, what will they think of next?

This is the kind of thing that, when I see it, gives me a chuckle but also lets me know I have too much free internet surfing time on my hands. Still, these pics are pretty funny and perhaps worth a look. The idea is to take a picture of a man and his baby and switch their heads. The head of the baby is made bigger and the head of the man is made smaller to match the body sizes of both. Weird but true!

PopSugar was the first I've seen to get hold of the photos, which you can check out in a slideshow here. Want to get in on the action? All you have to do is provide your own family photo. While this seems more appropriate for Father's Day than the impending Mother's Day holiday, I thought it best to alert you to this site for your viewing enjoyment asap. ENJOY! Or, should I say, "Manjoy?"

And, yes, that is a normal picture of a man and his baby. You'll have to check out the ManBabies website if you want the real thing.

Social networking websites like Facebook are all the rage with teenagers these days. Unfortunately, they're also popular with those who would prey on teenagers. Facebook, the second largest such site, has just gotten safer, however. Working with states' attorneys general, the company has agreed to make changes to become less perilous for kids.

Last January, MySpace, the largest social networking site in the world, came to a similar agreement. Some of the changes Facebook are to prevent alcohol and tobacco ads from reaching those too young to purchase those items, to disallow groups related to incest, pedophilia, and bullying, and to issue a warning when a child is about to provide personal information to an adult.

"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We've now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography." Forty-nine states and Washington D.C. have approved the agreements.

Richard Blumenthal, the Attorney General from Connecticut, hailed the agreement as the start of "a new era in social networking safety." It's a new world inside the computer and it's good that steps are being made in making it a safer environment for kids.

"Mommy, Mike Mulligan smokes a pipe," my three year old son told me the other day while we were digging in the garden.

I knew right away what he was talking about: we'd been out for pizza the night before, and on the way to the car he was gleefully jumping off picnic table benches when we encountered not one, but many cigarette butts.

Of course he wanted to know what they were, and I explained that some people smoke them even though it's really bad for them, and it makes it unhealthy for their lungs. And they often don't clean up after themselves and leave part of the cigarette behind.He nodded earnestly, and that was, I thought, the last of it ...until he brought it up in the garden the next day.

"You're right, Mike Mulligan does smoke a pipe" I said, hoping we could just leave it at that.

"Is he a-posed to though mommy?" he asked me, earnestly, scanning my face for the way I would respond.

"Well, no. It will make his lungs hurt," I replied.

"But then why does he do it?"

Oy. How on earth do you answer that? Mike Mulligan drives a STEAM SHOVEL for crying out loud. He is what every little digger-obsessed boy wants to be.

Granted, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is old school. A classic. Outdated, maybe, but it's a favorite around our house.

And there are so other classic kid's books that endorse bad behaviors: Ella the Elephant which is a delightful tale about overcoming selfishness and learning to help others, exept for the fact that a mean old farmer tries to shoot Ella in the rump. In fact, many Bill Peet books feature both guns and pipes.

It's even more of a slippery slope once one begins to delve into the realm of 'chapter books'. Pipi Longstocking who wields guns, drinks coffee, curses, and generally runs amok, while also setting a fierce and delightful example for girls to be anything they wish to be. And The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, well, the book was, and still is, banned from various schools by various groups of concerned individuals.

So. What should you do as a parent with these books from from an era gone by, that are at onece (arguably) a bad influence, AND great stories of character, plot, and sheer delight? Do you skip them, or read them and attempt to give your kiddo a literary and social context with which to interpret them?

Are you a fan of the Barenaked Ladies? Are your kids? What would you do with a million dollars? If you're not a fan, or even familiar with them, the Barenaked Ladies are a Canadian alternative rock group dating back to the late 1980's. Now, you're probably thinking "Canada? The country that gave us such musical porridge as Anne Murray, Celine Dion, and William Shatner?" but, well, okay, you've got a point. I would counter, however, with the Tragically Hip, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and Heart.

Whatever your thoughts on the Canadian music scene, the Barenaked Ladies have risen to fame over the years and have now announced their latest album: Snacktime. The album is the group's first collection of children's music and features such soon-to-be classics as 7 8 9, My Big Sister, and Crazy ABC's.

The CD is also available with a companion book by the group, "a hilarious and touching collection of stories based on their children's album of the same name. Snacktime takes you through a world full of Humungous Trees, Ninjas, Popcorn, and imagination that will leave you hungry for more!" If you pre-order from their website before April 28th, the CD alone is only $10 and the Book and CD Combo is $15, both with free shipping.

If you're unsure about whether or not this is something you'd want to share with your kids, you can check out the animated video of their song 7 8 9 below. It's a western-themed take on the classic explanation of why six is afraid of seven. Check it out, then check out the whole album. I know I am.

Do your kids know what a record store is? Do they even know what a record is? My kids know about CD's and DVD's, but I suspect that if I pulled out some of my old vinyl albums, they'd probably guess "Frisbee" or "dinner plate" before "musical recording". Even my kids are, perhaps, unusual because I buy all my music on CD's still, rather than downloading from iTunes or other online vendors.

Well, tomorrow is your chance to expose your kids to not just new music but the whole atmosphere of a place staffed and frequented by music lovers -- the record store. April 19th is Record Store Day, when "all of these stores will simultaneously link and act as one with the purpose of celebrating the culture and unique place that they occupy both in their local communities and nationally."

It's important to me that I share as much and as eclectic a selection of music as possible with my kids; it's hard to do that with the limited choices available at big name, chain stores. Local, independent stores offer much more than just songs -- they carry local and up-and-coming artists. They have staff who know music and can make recommendations that you wouldn't get from the big box stores.

Perhaps, most of all, record stores offer an experience you just can't get anywhere else. The atmosphere of a store dedicated, perhaps even obsessively, to music is infectious. The staff plays what they like, not what the corporate office is pushing this week. They can not only tell you about their favorite discoveries, but sell you on them as well. All the chains can do is sell you the CD. The record store is a place to learn as well as listen and this Saturday is a great opportunity to head out with the kids and see if you can find something new to listen to.

I swore that if my wife got pregnant again, I was going to take a picture of her every day and string them together into a video, but alas, I am not together enough to accomplish something like that. Nor have I done any of the other ultra-cool things people are coming up with these days. Luckily, however, it's not too late, even for me.

The YoungMe-NowMe challenge offers anyone a chance to participate in a cool photography project -- simply find a picture of yourself from when you were very young and try to recreate that picture and pose today. There are prizes available for the best recreations, but you'll have to hurry as the deadline is this Sunday, the 20th of April.

Even if you don't make it for the official contest, however, this would be a fun thing to do anyway. I'm also thinking that one could do this with one's kids by taking the same picture once or twice a year as they grow up -- sort of a photographic version of the height marks on the doorjamb. I have a picture of my son Jared just a few days old, sitting in the tire on the bonnet of a friend's Land Rover, and a similar picture from a year or so later. I think I need to start recreating those photos more regularly.

For that matter, why not have your own kids try to recreate a photo of you from when you were their age? That could be a lot of fun, actually, and who knows -- someday your grandkids and great grandkids might be taking the same pictures.

Master Sgt. Morris Hill is serving his country in Iraq, a long way away from his beloved sons back in Texas. Luckily, these days, we have the means for people on opposite sides of the planet to talk to each other in real time, almost without regard to where they actually are. We have cell phones.

Unfortunately, the only time Hill could call his son Brandon was during the school day -- a time when students are generally forbidden from using their cell phones. It would seem, however, that this situation would count as extraordinary circumstances and an exception could be made, but administrators disagree. Brandon was suspended for taking the call.

"He called me during class, because that's the only time that he could," Brandon said. "I answered the call as I was walking out of class. The teacher followed me out and said, 'Oh what are you doing?' I said my dad was calling from Iraq, and I know he needs to talk to me." Brandon was sent to the office and given a two-day suspension.

The odd part is that the father had apparently made an arrangement in advance with the assistant principal to allow his sons to receive calls from him. "He had spoken with Mr. Fletcher," said Pat Hill, the boys' mother. "He thought there was an agreement understood that if he called either Joshua or Brandon at school, that everything was fine."

"If this would have been the last phone call from my husband, and he's in trouble for it and then has to deal with something happening to his dad that would be even harder," Mrs. Hill added. "These schools have to stop and realize, especially when you are in a military community, we support our soldiers, we support our troops. What about them when they are in Iraq trying to reach their family?"

Mrs. Hill is trying to get the suspension removed from her son's record, but the school says the matter is closed. Whether or not you support the United States' actions overseas, you've got to understand that the soldiers are doing their job and that they and their families are still people -- people who care very much about each other and have a need to stay in contact. It seems to me that the school could be more understanding on that point.

The proliferation of electronic devices in our lives might make things easier, but the messy tangle of wires is not only annoying and unsightly, it can also be a strangulation hazard to young children.

In my latest decluttering attempts, I've been focusing on how best to organize our corded equipment , which has turned into a far trickier endeavor than I had imagined. However, for cords up to 5mm in diameter (which includes all low voltage chargers, USB, firewire, data and telephone cables) the Cable YoYo is perfect.

This sleek, unobtrusive, genius invention holds to 6 feet of cord in only a 3 X 3 inch space and more important, is only 1/4 of an inch high, so it's not a huge eyesore. The Cable YoYo is made up of only two pieces, the square spool on which you wind your cord and a storage spindle with an adhesive on the back that allows you to mount your Cable YoYo out of the way and easily remove it when your need your cord on the go.

I cannot tell you how much more visually appealing my counter tops are now that the stupid telephone cords aren't all over them. I LOVE THIS PRODUCT!!

Cable YoYos are available in white, black and gray cost a mere $5 a piece.

Now if only they made larger versions to hold the cords on lamp, television and the computer! Any suggestions for those problem areas?

Stuff. Old stuff. Some people have a lot of it. Some have little. Some, like me, have no space in which to keep it, which keeps the limit down. We all, though, however small or large our dwellings, seem to have room in our lives for stuff that we don't necessarily need, don't necessarily use, yet can't seem to part with.

For me, some of it is sentimental attachment. Cards my grandmother has sent to me, a bejeweled letter opener an aunt gave me, that kind of thing. Some of it, though, I secretly think might have value some day. So, I keep it, in hopes it will help pay for my children's college education. Or, perhaps, if held on to long enough, it could bring them a lot more than that.

So I keep it. I have an electric guitar that is truly in exceptional condition. This is because I got it early in high school when I still thought I might actually be a rock star. I played it a while, then tucked it away safely under my bed in its hard case where it lives to this day along with some picks and sheet music. It is probably worth something, but I can't even throw it on craigslist as I know not what year it was made or purchased, nor what type of guitar it is (it's some sort of Westone).

I also have a few things that I don't really have use for or space to keep them in but can't part with because a family member gave it to me. My recently departed grandmother once gave me a carnival glass pitcher. I did look this item up, and it turns out that since it has no special symbol engraved on it, it isn't true carnival glass and is not currently worth anything.

Still, some day it might be worth something!

This is what my father says to the collection of half-dollars, Susan B. Anthony dollars and two dollar bills we still has from when I was a kid. The idea had been to help me out with it when I got old enough. Then, I got old enough. And I guess we never bothered to do anything with all that coin (and those few dollars). Perhaps we forgot or perhaps it wasn't worth anything, yet.

So, we have my children to pass it on to and they can decide what to do with it. Frankly, a dollar is worth more today then it will be ten years from now so we might as well cash that stuff in and open up a savings account. That would be the smart thing to do. There's no romance in that, though, no fun story to tell the kids when they're old enough about how we came up with the money for college with a few old coins (and those few dollars).

In an e-bay kind of world it's easy to think our junk could be worth something to our kids. It could also, as e-bay has shown us, just stay junk, even if it is pretty junk that we are attached to nonetheless.

So, what to do? Sell it now for what we can get, or hold on to it long enough to let the kids decide what to do with it? Part of me dreads holding on to all that stuff when I know we're moving soon and could stand to move with less. Part of me says throw it online and take whatever you can get for it, even if you don't know the real value. Part of me says to just scrap the whole thing and put the stuff on the street.

Then, part of me thinks my kid will think I am cool when he's in high school and I present him with a vintage guitar in excellent condition. Of course, he could not want to be a rock star.

Losing a child is one of the most painful heart-stopping moments you will ever experience, even if it's just for a few minutes. My husband and I still have a hard time talking about the day our 4 year old took a couple steps away and was separated from us by the huge crowds at a college football game and that happened over a decade ago. (We found him quickly about 10 yards behind us telling the police officer giving free Breathalyzers that he was lost. WHEW.)

A mother, worried about losing her kids at an amusement park, invented Safety Tats, a temporary tattoos that can be personalized with a phone number for kids too young to know it themselves. The tattoos use FDA compliant medical-grade adhesives that are latex-free, holds up against encounters with water, and is available in a variety of styles including ones stating the child has a nut allergy, is nonverbal, or is autistic. There's even a special set for field trips so schools can be double sure their field trip participants can be quickly reunited from the group.

30 tattoos are available on the website for $20. Naturally it also discourages the ParentHack of simply writing a cell number in permanent marker on a child's stomach before heading out because that would be free.

Thanks, Nicole!

Considering the fact that Dairy Queen has been around for over 60 years and is one of the largest fast food chains in the world, one wonders why it took them so long to jump on the virtual world bandwagon. But now they have jumped and are aiming at the tween market with Unite the Deeqs, an online gaming site.

"Everybody knows - especially in today's world - that if you're going to engage tweens online, you better have a gaming component to that online experience," said Michael Keller, chief brand officer for American Dairy Queen Corp., Minneapolis.

Unite the Deeqs features customizable anime-style characters who live in DQ-topia. Legend has it that the Deeqs are a species evolved from a batch of "too fun" and "too powerful" soft serve ice cream. They have escaped the freezer and must now unite to battle an "evil storm" that threatens their world. Along the way, they walk, jump and fly around collecting burgers and treats and racking up points.

Who comes up with this stuff? Creative marketing firm Space 150, that's who. And while the site is currently just a tad boring, it won't be that way for long. There are plans to incorporate a social networking component as well as the all-important accumulate-points-and-buy-stuff feature. I can hardly wait.

When you're pregnant, you are inundated with guidebooks and advice from others: Breast is best! Back to sleep! Tummy time! However, when your child hits the teen years, there's an eerie silence.

For example, my oldest son is fifteen years old, a mere six years from the legal drinking age. Celebrating a 21st birthday by drinking 21 shots or drinks wasn't common when I was that age, but in one study of over 2,500 college students, 34 percent of the men and 24 percent of the women reported consuming 21 or more drinks on that milestone birthday. I live in a college town and hear stories that make me believe that is an accurate statistic.

However, I'm not finding much information on what I can do as a parent to help ready my child for dealing with alcohol. I was raised in the "Just Say No" era and can count on one hand (with fingers left over) how many times I saw my parents with a drink. However, tallying the drinks I consumed in just that first week of college would require all my fingers and toes AND I'd have to borrow some from my roommates.

In a column in the New York Times, one wine-loving father shares his struggle with how to introduce their children to alcohol in a responsible manner and I'm so grateful for him for opening this Pandoric box. Just as parents are told to model appropriate social behavior and speech patterns for their children, I think it's important to consider modeling appropriate alcohol as well.

I haven't given my kids sips of any alcoholic beverages at home, but I'm wondering if that would help take away the allure of alcohol in the same way that seeing me rock out on Guitar Hero 3 has destroyed the sexiness of "Talk Dirty to Me" and "Slow Ride" for my boys.

When the snow is nearly gone (only the piles left from clearing parking lots remain) which means one thing: baseball season!

Two California Little League teams got the surprise of their lives when Improv Everywhere (the same group that became frozen statues in Grand Central Station) turned an ordinary scheduled game into a major league event complete with JumboTron, sports announcers, screaming fans, real mascots and even the Goodyear blimp.

The confusion, disbelief, and then excitement in the kids and parents is amazing to see.

Thanks for the tip, Caitlin!

Negotiating for more independence is a rite of passage for children, so Izzy Skenazy asking his mother if he could please, please, please be allowed to go home all by himself isn't that unusual.

What is unique is that nine-year-old Izzy's mode of transportation would be via subway in a city with a population of over 8 million.

Lenore Skenazy, a columnist for The New York Sun, left her son alone at Bloomingdale's in midtown Manhattan with a MetroCard for the subway, a subway map, $20 in cash and some quarters for a pay phone. He made it home safe and exhilarated by the adventure but the reaction from the article she wrote about his experience was decidedly mixed.

"Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating - for us and for them."

However, Skenazy told Ann Curry in a TODAY show interview there were many people who shared with great fondness their own first journey alone, "So many people – the ones who aren't castigating me as crazy – are all regaling me about the first time they took the subway. And for most people, it's a great, happy memory. People love that independence."

It's interesting that you can be taken to court for child endangerment for leaving a sleeping two-year-old buckled in a carseat inside a locked car, but there isn't much guidance when it comes to leaving a child home alone or allowing them to travel by themselves.

In my day, the schools all had Apple computers -- specifically, the Apple II. Apple worked hard to get their computers into the hands of future computer buyers, even going so far as to sell them with the Bell & Howell (remember those old film projectors?) name on them. These days, however, most schools have switched to Windows-based machines, possibly due to the relatively high cost of Apple's Macintosh computers and the plentiful supply of ex-business donated systems.

There are those, however, who feel that schools don't need to pay Microsoft hundreds of dollars for what many consider to be an inferior operating system. Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, wrote an interesting paper explaining why schools should exclusively use free software, such as the widely available and extremely powerful Linux operating system.

Stallman says that using free software, in addition to saving schools money, encourages an atmosphere of learning -- the technology behind the software is not locked away in some corporate vault, but is there in the open for children to see and learn from. It also fosters a sense of community sharing as the software can be shared with the students for the betterment of all.

Richard Stallman isn't the only one who feels this way, of course. A lot of people in the computer industry agree with him. Likewise, there are those in the education world who agree, perhaps most notably in Switzerland. Beginning next fall, nine thousand computers will have the Windows operating system removed and will use only Ubuntu Linux. There will be no proprietary software on the systems at all.

According to Manuel Grandjean, director for the schools' technology services, the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) "encourages participation and the democratization of knowledge and provides product independent competences" as well as being a "reinforcement of equal opportunities" for students.

I would love to see more schools making this switch, not only for Stallman and Grandjean's reasons, but also because it will better prepare students for the reality they will face when they leave the academic world.