7 Secrets to Raising a Happy Child

Nice article at zenhabbits, getting right to it:

1. Let your child know you are excited to see them when they enter the room.
2. Teach your child it’s okay to be bored.
3. Limit your child’s media.
4. Let your child know they are more important than work.
5. Let your child make a few of the rules.
6. Teach your child - don’t assume it’s all happening outside the house.
7. Model appropriate behavior.

Full article is at: http://zenhabits.net/2009/06/7-secrets-to-raising-a-happy-child/

I would add a 8th one which is always listen to your child. Many times this has happened that my son was doing something and I said no with my own preconceived notions and he comes back with and answer that just surprises me and makes his actions totally valid. Kind of similar to this article - http://www.figarospeech.com/teach-a-kid-to-argue/

Kids’ why questions

http://whyzz.com/ in an interesting service that offers parents kid-ready answers to how the world works whenever and wherever they are asked. 

Like Why does it rain?

Rain comes from clouds, which are themselves made up of lots and lots of tiny droplets of water that are holding on to each other. The water making up the clouds sometimes gets heavy, especially when the clouds encounter colder air. When the cloud's water droplets get heavy enough the droplets can no longer hold on to each other and they fall to the ground as rain!

A nice browser for young kids

I used to have my 3 year old son try and use Safari browser and he was getting comfortable with Youtube but then recently we tried Kidoz. If you have't heard , it's a nice browser which kids can safely use and I find my son enjoys it quite a lot too

Check it out - http://kidoz.net/

What a mess photo club

babycenter.com has a pictures of kids at their messiest best :-)

http://community.babycenter.com/photoclubs/a3017305/what_a_mess

What can my baby see?

very interesting research about how babies see things and recognize shapes colors etc.

"Until recently, many people, even some experts, thought that infants could not see very much. This idea is not new. William James, the great 19th century philosopher and psychologist, argued that the visual world of infants is a "booming, buzzing confusion." Over the last 30 years, developmental and experimental psychologists have intensely investigated visual development. Curiously, many current baby books have not mentioned newer findings. This article attempts to summarize, in non-technical language, some of the most important findings about what your baby can see and when each of these visual abilities develop."

http://www.ski.org/Vision/babyvision.html

Excellent Bike for 3-5 year olds

Recently we were researching for a great bike for our 3 year old son, looked through many different options and finally found this:

12" Boys' Tonka Mighty Tough Bike

It has a 4 star rating in Walmart with 100+ reviews, Amazon also shows 4.5 star rating with 10 reviews.

It's a solid built, looks cool specially with shockers. Price is great as well, about $65 - walmart is the best deal as of today.