Think you’re stressed? He’s only got 9 days left to shower the whole world in presents. What’s on his mind? Answer and win one of three gifts from this year’s list (your pick!).

Answer in comments section below.

Rules: Fill out the e-mail form above the comments section so we can contact you if you win. E-mail is kept private.

Deadline: December 17

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Got a kid on your checklist who likes water balloons, water pistols, hoses, firecrackers, physics, tinkering, experiments, space or just general mayhem? Then the little rascal deserves to have his mind blown by Great American Projects’ Aquapod Bottle Launcher ($24.95), which is like every adolescent boy’s dream come true and won’t put his eye out, kid.

The only requirements for the Aquapod beyond being old enough to operate it (14, and even then with adult supervision) is that somebody in the family drinks 2 liter Coke products (you need the empty bottle), and there’s a bicycle pump laying around in the garage somewhere. After this, you need to find an open space (city kids can hit the park) and have an audience. Or just wait—you’ll create one.

The Aquapod is a bright orange tripod made of heavy-duty plastic that requires no assembly. It’s got a little bike-pump valve out the back, a launch valve that you clip the stainless steel launch string from, and a valve you screw your bottle onto (filled halfway with water). Then there’s the built-in safety valve that releases enough pressure to keep the entire thingamajig from over-pressurizing, which makes this about the safest bottle rocket launcher on the market. So no one should get hurt—unless one of your kid’s friends is dangling from a target-area tree: the Aquapod launches up to 100 feet, and it goes fast.

The set-up is virtually mistake proof. I am about the clumsiest, least-skilled erector of such toys, and even I knew, from the visible sign of the water flowing out, that I’d pumped enough with my sad old bike pump to launch that sucker to Mars and back. It took a baby tug on the wire to set it off, and when it did, a victorious spray of water hit my ankles and my old Sprite bottle had never looked sleeker racing through the sky. So, so much cooler than water balloons.

www.theaquapod.com for purchase

Photo courtesy of Great American Projects

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For the Little Miss: Hello Hanna Get-Set Placemats

One of the hardest tricks I’ve had to pull off as a parent is trying to get my 3

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For the New Baby You Didn’t Get a Present for and Now it’s the Holidays: Blabla Rattles

Every now and again it’s like I’m passing through a breeding season, where everyone’s having babies, one after the next, in the space of a couple of months. All of a sudden there’s a Gia and an Avery and a Jacob where previously there were none. Amid the flurry of first photos and videos and e-mails and phone calls, there’s the mounting consideration of what to get the new baby. It’s the kind of happy obligation that goes to the top of my to-do list, where it sometimes sits in its abstraction, needling me to get on the ball and send this baby something (what?) already.

I look at the holidays as a time where all gift-giving wrongs from the previous year can be righted. Including the failure to acknowledge a friend’s baby’s birth with a present.

There is no baby on the planet who could possibly reject the sweet, sweet knitted playthings from Blabla, a company with an inspired genesis story and even better products. Every piece in the line is knitted by Peruvian artisans in a fair trade arrangement. After the co-owners of the company discovered entire villages of knitters while on a trip to Peru, they started designing unique pieces and having the traditional artisans conjure them into being. There are mermaids, smiling girls and boys, long floppy animals and whimsical mobiles all in bright colors and all machine-washable.

But for that infant you’ve neglected to fete, consider the rattles, which are bound to become cuddly crib toys as well as active playthings. My favorite is Octavio ($29), a rotund bird rattle with peeping eyes and a bright orange scarf. The giraffe rattle is skinnier, lighter and wearing a red hat and a bird on his back, and the elephant version ($34 for set) has floppy ears and tusks. While the workmanship involved here is impressive, and the rattles are soft and pliable, these are surprisingly durable toys. I know because my daughter has had the pink-finned mermaid since she was six-months old. I’ve washed Evie a gazillion times, and she’s as crisply knitted and vibrant as she was on the first day. I like a gift that has so much potential: go-to rattle, stuffed animal, heirloom toy. And all-is-forgiven late baby gift.    

www.blablakids.com for stores

Photo courtesy of Blabla

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 Remember that scene in Christmas Story where Randy slops his meatloaf around and builds a mashed potato mountain? Eventually, to his father’s dismay, he plunges his face into the whole mess, snorting like a pig while mom exclaims, Show me how the piggies eat!

 A true piece of Americana, that scene, as it so perfectly reflects everything kinda funky about mid-century dinnertime: the heaping, gelatinous portions of carbohydrates, the insistence that a child clean his plate, the overworked father silently stewing at the head of the table. But no matter what century we’re in, one thing doesn’t change: little kids are finicky about food. We know this is completely appropriate to their stage of development—they are sensitive to textures, they have difficulty sitting at a table for more than 10-15 minutes, they are busy defining their likes and dislikes and asserting those wherever possible. They are slow eaters or too fast eaters or nothing can touch on the plate or things must be eaten in a certain order; whatever it is, it’s normal. We’re lucky when we find something that helps us cope with the circus that dinner has become.

 In this case, that something is Constructive Eating’s Mealtime Set ($19.95). Based on the idea that utensils are vehicles for food, and combining that with the fact that your toddler wants to (and must, according to Penelope Leach) play with his food, CE’s concept is shrewd: make the fully-functioning utensils into construction-site vehicles. That way, a toddler is excited to use them, and the notion that those tools are designed to deliver something to your mouth (and not there to flick or fling or tap) is reiterated.

Every set includes a wide-bodied Fork Lift Fork and a sizeable Front Loader Spoon. My favorite is the third utensil, The Pusher, which takes what your toddler already does (i.e Randy slopping and sliding mashies around) and converts that impulse into a way to get the food on your spoon, fork, etc. So The Pusher just rams the food where you need it to go. The utensils have the standard black-and-yellow construction vehicle motif with tire-track handles for good gripping. It’s all BPA and Pthalate-Free, with no paint, no lead and dishwasher safe. The only problem here is your child may want to take them from the table and play with them elsewhere. Restricting these utensils to mealtime only gives the entire affair a kind of mystique, which I recommend exploiting for as long as it holds out.

For stores go to www.constructiveeating.com

Photo courtesy of Constructive Eating

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As long as you’ve got small people mastering fine motor skills living under your roof, you’ve got to give them something to stack besides your breakable coasters, so I’ve run the gamut of blocks and building sets in my home. My kids have lost those connectors without which an entire project is rendered useless. I have had to add to a basic set when my daughter needed more Eiffel in her tower. And as a result of all the re-buying and rebuilding, my house is overrun with blocks and links and bridges and trappings that could, in their collected state, erect a small vacation home next door.

CitiBlocs rather elegantly solves these problems. Don’t be fooled by the name; yes, these striking, sweeping precision-cut blocks could make a fine city skyline, but they can do other things besides. And that’s because every block is cut to a 1:3:5:15 ratio (and every one is the same size), which is the basic formula for constructing any building no matter the scale. What does this mean for your kid? Because the CitiBlocs makers bothered to employ a little math in conceiving their block set, your child can now literally build pretty much anything from one basic set—no connectors or links or extra parts or embellished sets necessary. You can get them in a bright rainbow of colors or in an eco-friendly unpainted version in sets of 50 up to 300.

It’s genuinely like working with a blank slate—except this blank slate has a nice, gentle weight in the hand (the wood is top-notch Grade A Radiata Pine from renewable forests, of course) and just feels good to stack. Talk about open-ended play: since the structure of these blocks is so uniform, the game of it really is about what you can dream up and how you’re going to pull that off (so balance, perspective, concentration, planning….).  And because the design principle here is simple mathematical efficiency, your kid’s CitiBlocks are probably going to still be cool when he’s 14.

www.citiblocs.com for stores

Photo courtesy of CitiBlocs

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For the Tantrumy Preschooler: Kimochis

I know a four-year old girl who, for about a year, communicated primarily through a series of articulate “meows.” Dazzling examples of self-expression aside, naming feelings is a tricky business for preschoolers. They’re little powerhouses of drama, but can’t yet wrangle that drama in language.

Enter Plushy Feely Corp’s Kimochis characters ($25), which are best described as about the softest, most open-faced, least threatening stuffed animals you could possibly imagine. Only they aren’t exactly animals, or dolls, both of which would suggest an identity instead of letting your kid confer one. Kimochis (which means ‘feeling’ in Japanese) are vaguely recognizeable figures-cat, cloud, bug-designed to help your child distinguish how he feels. The characters all have swivel heads with two faces (one smiling, one frowning) and a front pouch with mini Kimochis stuffed inside. Spelled out on the front of every mini is a basic feeling: sad, mad, happy. The idea of course is that your kid projects his feelings onto the figure by turning the head the right way and taking the corresponding emotion out of the pouch; if Luca’s thrilled he’s in Pull-Ups, Kimochi Cloud is likely to be thrilled too. The creatures are both reassuring cuddlies and a means for self-expression.

But if your kids are like my kids, it’s when they’re upset that they get most tongue-tied, and that’s where Kimochis really delivers. I gave my Kimochi Cloud (love the cumulus/sweet alien effect of the three tiny clouds drooping out over one ear) to my two-year old Jude when he was mid-tantrum the other day. I showed him the mini-feelings, we picked the right one together and then he threw it happily across the room. In my book, that’s a coup: talking about the doll redirected his interest, calmed him down and created a new ritual we can use next time there’s an incident. Since there’s a helpful How-To guide included with every Kimochis, I got ideas about how to frame future conversations about tough feelings. So here’s hoping the Kimochis come out in adult-size. 

Kimochis available @ www.kimochis.com

Photo courtesty of Plushy Feely Corp

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     This year, Halloween is homespun; crafty parents are retrofitting old costumes and swapping hand-me downs, making their own models or buying handmade from Etsy. Even the hullabaloo over the holiday’s hellish associations has died down. No one in my town is offering any anti-pagan antidotes to the haunted houses and Heaven and Hell parties, and according to the Census Bureau, more kids than ever are trick-or-treating in neighborhoods that we overwhelmingly report as safe. So it seems we are even free to frolic again.

     And though it remains an indefatigable contender for most-unapologetically-commercialized holiday ever, Halloween has gone green. Today, your kid is more likely to request a hayride at the community farm or point out the reusable trick-or-treat sacks at the grocery store (which he can fill with gluten-free candy at his school’s eco-friendly party) than clamor for a bucket of ghost Peeps (thanks, Easter). Which is great—fog machines and macabre lights aside, Halloween is the moment to talk about the harvest-time. To not only carve up the pumpkin but to salvage the seeds for toasting and the guts for pie.  

     Still, I’m a little surprised that it’s greening up. After all, this is a holiday that celebrates morbid excess in all of its, um, morbidity.

But I’m on board. Thus, ixnay on the fog machine, mood lighting and bags of plastic eyeballs. Enter more baking, costumes that can be worn again and smarter sweets.

     The smartest, in fact. Candy so hyper-aware I feel, eating it, culturally insensitive by comparison. Candy so uncannily in-step with the New Millennium Halloween, I’m expecting 100% recyclable costumes and low-impact fog machines next year. The gourmet natural treats from Birmingham, Alabama’s Indie Candy have none of the Big 8 Allergens. They don’t use artificial colors or flavors—just fruit, veggie and spice extracts. As if that’s not enough, they are Feingold Diet-approved (the Feingold Diet is the reigning ADHD food plan), taste like fruit-on-a-stick (unless you’re mainlining their juicy, squishy gummies straight from the bag, like me), come in pumpkins and bats and skulls and are gorgeous enough to serve to adults too.

     My kids don’t have allergies, but my daughter Willa’s classmates do. I can’t imagine what I’d do if she had a peanut allergy—peanut butter being her primary food source. But if she was sensitive to tree-nuts or wheat or casein, Halloween really would be hell. I’d be inspecting all that dubious candy with a blacklight and an EpiPen. Or she’d skip tricks and treats altogether, which sounds like the biggest of possible drags for a three-year old.

     Now, a smarter, more eco-friendly, allergen-free Halloween and a morbidly excessive Halloween aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m going Indie this year and ordering dairy-free chocolate Batz lollipops for Willa’s class party. Maybe I can’t sew her costume or explain the life cycle of the pumpkin or make all of our decorations out of tree branches, but I can definitely hook the kids up with some seriously good chocolate that’s safe for all of them.       

Photo courtesy of Indie Candy

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We’re two weeks into school down South and my daughter’s lunchbox already lost its mustache.

She’s three and this is her first one. This is her first everything: galoshes, Hello Kitty underwear, classroom pet, foray into complex socio-political playground dynamics. I’m 33. This is the first time I’ve been mother to a daughter old enough to go to school every day. The first time I’ve genuinely related to those beleaguered moms in TV commercials pimping mops and paper towels, their kids galumphing through the kitchen with hockey sticks and dirty backpacks. The first time my day has been ritualized by a school schedule that isn’t my own. Two weeks and the soothing, regulatory, mandatory pattern of institution has us all toeing the line.

But then, Goodbyn lost her stache. And her watch. Plus all the letters in my daughter’s name-Willa-except, in an act of charity, the W.

I bought this lunchbox because I get excited about school, positively nuts about school. More idealizing and witless and romantic about school than any past-her-prime student has any right to be. And this because I’ve either been enrolled in them or teaching in them or hanging around at them like a mutt or a badger or an orphan for my entire life. I’m also a kid’s products junkie. So the first day of school, with its patina of newness and productivity, the promise of as-yet unfettered backpacks soldiering forth on brave little shoulders and the chance to finally and accurately gauge shoe sizes, is basically my Christmas. And the lunchbox, with its symbolic potential? My holly. My mistletoe. My big honking gift.

Which is why I scoped every reliable source on the Net for the best one I could find (that’s right; an accoutrement now available at the supermarket warranted, for me, an online search). I’m clearly not alone. Judging by the blitz of boxes out there, we now live in an age where even the humble lunchbox has achieved couture status.

To wit: the Goodbyn ($24.95), a high-concept box shaped like Mickey Mouse for Generation Z. I saw it and swooned: made of 100% recyclable materials, available in a range of punky colors and big as a sheet of notebook paper, the Goodbyn looked virtually faultless. Take off the top by the ears and inside you’ve got six compartments designed to hold food without the use of plastic bags or wrap (tucked in one of them is a little thermos). It’s bento for the playground set. When I saw that it also included 275 stickers for personalization, I was sold.

We stayed up the first night before school practicing with the Goodbyn: lay it flat, pull by the ears, dig in. And we did it up with the stickers. Googly eyes, a mustache, I Love Willa spelled out on the back. When Goodbyn hit the clutch of moms and preschoolers alternately weeping and posing for photographs out front of school that day, it was like Lady Gaga swanning by in a starfish bra and sparkler shoulder pads.

Since the ‘Byn’s splashy debut, I’ve learned this: when the box says “for age five and up,” it means age five and up. I think of my daughter as highly coordinated, and I appreciate the kid-friendly engineering that’s gone into this lunchbox, but the compartments are deep and I’m pouring the food in (I occasionally worry that I’m saving the earth one-less baggie at a time but drowning it in uneaten raisins). Willa often complains that it’s too heavy to carry off the playground, and in preschool, there’s a lot of interest in opening and closing containers, which the Goodbyn, in its streamlined design, renders moot. But there’s lots of bonuses. The box is dishwasher safe, and the stickers hold up in the wash. I can’t think of a food item that wouldn’t fit in one of the compartments. There’s no need for a juice box with the thermos. And it’s all made in the hardy Midwest, by companies that use the word “transparency” a lot in their mission statements.

As for the stickers? Every day Goodbyn comes home with a new look. I don’t know who has the peace sign sticker or the toothbrush or the pencil, but somebody in my daughter’s class is a stylist in the making. Or maybe it’s just that the desire for personalization is always trumped by the desire to depersonalize. So Goodbyn has rotating identities. In an effort to explain her mercurial style, Lady Gaga once asked, “If your aesthetic were to walk through a wooden door, what shape would it leave?” The big deal with this box is its shape. The big deal is its design.

There’s something ministerial about placing wedges of tortilla and maple ham and glossy seedless grapes and cloth napkins into those compartments, as though I’ve transferred all of my hopes and dreams about order and organization into my daughter’s day, somehow. As with traditional bento, the food seems “presented” to my toddler, like maybe I’ve composed a neat food picture for her pleasure.

With hot lunches, food programs and fast food stalls taking over the lunchtime scene, packing a lunch is a dying art. Boxes like these both preserve and reinvent what is, in the end, a lovely practice. It’s hard not to feel good about sending someone you love off into the world with a lunch that you folded and diced and washed and spooned. Even if that box comes back to you with half an eye and a cactus in its ear.

Photo courtesy of Goodbyn

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