Oh, what is going on? Why am I feeling this way?

We were so determined to thwart the Pink Industrial Complex with the kid, and we generally succeeded. With K2, we have basically failed miserably. The experience leads me to the conclusion that there's more to being a feminist and raising feminists than angsting over the color pink. But still. STILL. THERE ARE LIMITS.

And ask me cold, I would have said a pink crib and a pink-accented nursery crosses those limits. Extraneous girliness, must be rejected.

And yet. There's something almost hypnotically attractive about Kalon Studio's limited edition [summer only!] pink Caravan crib. I can't stop staring at it. Seriously. It's the near-neon-ness of it, I guess. Like a pair of running shorts you can't help notice as they pass you on the boardwalk. Maybe that's not the right frame of mind for a crib, even if it's what got you in the crib-buying situation in the first place.

ANYWAY, Kalon does everything else right: local manufacture, sustainability, craftsmanship, price, so somehow their mystical merchandising power has extended to color. Definitely check it out while you can. Or lash yourself to the mast, and have Siri go straight to the other six finishes for you.

Kalon Studios, Caravan Crib, $695, limited edition "near-neon pink" available only during the summer [kalonstudios via publicist]

Minneapolis-based artist Evan Palmer likes to create these mechs driven by adorable battalions of animals, set in a dystopian post-Scarry universe. You can buy prints of various images for extremely reasonable prices at Palmer's online shop.

Meanwhile, his Instagram is sprinkled with photos of the elaborately mundane Lego minifig dioramas he builds in his spare time. Very satisfied, would surf again.

Evan Palmer Comics tumblr [evanpalmercomics via calvin's canadian cave of cool, thanks dt reader eric]
Evan Palmer storefront at Society6, prints starting at $18 [society6]

90-year-old David Resnick ran an outfit called United Inventors and Scientists which loved to help inventors. In fact, he helped the inventor of this spring-mounted cradle right out of the photo, and right out of the 1974 LA Times feature article it ran with.

But I do know that that 2yo kid they stuck in the cradle, Jose Crespo, is too big for it, and that as soon as he stood up, that whole thing'd topple over and faceplant him on the workshop's concrete floor.

And now that I bought this old photo, I do know that that car battery underneath it is, in fact, NOT connected to the cradle, but to the dismantled pedal car behind it.

And if I had to guess who invented this rig, I'd go with Frank Grosse, of Glendale, who got a patent for a very similar design, a design that also, amazingly, had casters. Because, why not, right? How else you gonna move that thing around? People so crazy.

Except, Grosse filed his patent in 1960, and it was granted in 1963. And it was a spinoff of an earlier patent for a spring-mounted hobby horse that Grosse filed in 1959 with Charles Barnes.

So what kind of help Resnick was providing 14 years later, either to the original inventor or to a guy who thought he'd just invented it, I have no idea.

Infant's Rocking Cradle, US3078479 [google patents]
Child's Rocking Device, US2996298 [google patents]

I've had New Dads On The Block's blog open in my browser tabs since, like, the third trimester. Now these two dads Josh & Matt have not only made it to India for the birth of their twins [mazeltov!], they've gotten through the most difficult phase of the international surrogacy process: getting approximately one million forms stamped and approved by the US Consulate and Indian government's bureaucracies.

Anyway, they're home now, back in New York City and/or Wilmington, NC; there's a bit of posting lag now as newborn twins don't really appreciate how much time it takes to maintain a blog.

But anyone in need of highly detailed, step-by-step accounts of navigating international surrogacy in general, and India in particular [where surrogacy laws recognize genetic parents, thereby simplifying the infant citizenship process] should dive into NDOTB's archives. I now feel like I could navigate you and your DNA swabs through the US Consulate's compound by Skype if I needed to.

If your interests are more along the lines of watching new dads grapple with the realities of adorable twins, then you can just start following along now.

New Dads On The Block [newdadsontheblock]

Children of the great failed American devil, cower in fear at the awesome creative power of the glorious future leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. These children are all six months old, and this tank was fabricated in the womb by a young comrade who could not wait to be born to start honoring the Great Leader. 100,000 more are cardboard tanks are amassing at the DMZ this very minute, where North Korean superbabies will ride them into the burned out remnants of Seoul.You have been warned.

Reuters/Kyodo photo of an International Children's Day parade in North Korea, part of Re-enacting the Past [see fullsize image at infocus/theatlantic, via dt reader rolf]

Wife:"The six year old had to wear a tank top for her recital and ran around the house yelling 'sun's out guns out' and I know you did this"

I have no idea who this is. I had no idea about this tank top rite of spring, which I had to look up on urbandictionary. And I had no idea this was gonna be Big Guns Week at Daddy Types, but sometimes you just gotta go with it.

Whenever DT wanders from the strictly pre-school-sized pedal car beat and toward the big kid go-karts, there's always a good reason. Or at least a reason that seemed good at the time.

So I can see how a vintage 70s, gas-powered, fiberglass Dodge van kiddie car can seem awesome, and perfect for your kid to grow into.

Until you see that it really is a pint-sized version of the shaggin' wagon in this ad, and you find yourself explaining how, when two people really like each other... in a van...

VINTAGE 1976 DODGE STREET VAN GO KART (VERY RARE)! - $1000 (WILLOW GROVE) [philadelphia.craigslist.org, thanks dt reader anthony]

On the other hand, I guess I don't quite buy Adam Davidson's point that his particular brand of Park Slope overparenting and the products that serve it have some kind of trickle-down benefit for the rest of the baby market.

Side-impact resistant car seats, for example, are driven by the regulatory regimes in places like the EU, while the US government's safety standards are generally stymied by industry lobbyists and product liability issues. No company will claim their seat is safer than another, or safer than the law requires, for fear of getting sued into the ground when a kid gets hurt or dies.

Davidson also mentions the drop-side crib ban which, if anything, works against his thesis. It was the poorly designed, cheapo cribs sold by the millions in national big box chains, that were strangling and suffocating kids for years. When this problem at the bottom of the market was finally addressed, it ended up impacting the design of deluxe cribs, too.

He cites phthalate-free baby products as a misleading marketing claim [phthalates are banned in US baby products anyway, so phthalate-free is about as low a safety bar as you can clear.] But he might have mentioned BPA, a plastic additive which was only slowly pushed out of most kids products by a combination of research and grassroots activists, including some of the overwrought parenting types Davidson is trying to be ironic about.

So yeah, relax a bit, have some perspective, and instead of constantly dwelling on your parenting shortcomings, keep your eyes peeled for anecdotes you can use to rationalize whatever your parenting choices are right now. Make confirmation bias work for you.

The Sippy Cup 1% [nyt via dt reader rolf]

Non-minimalist illustrator and maker Scott Bedford has been blogging up all kinds of interesting kid-related projects at WhatIMade.com. And now he's got a book. Made By Dad is a bunch of toys, furniture, gifts, and whatevers you can make for or with your kid.

Like this fine pencil cup made from dried out, blowtorched markers. Not that you need a kid to derive crafty pleasure from taking a blowtorch to a stack of old markers, but it is certainly enhanced.. Markers are a total scourge around our house, almost never worth the mess they make on faces, fingers, clothes, and tablecloths. I say burn'em all and let the kid use crayons.

Buy Made by Dad: 67 Blueprints for Making Cool Stuff by Scott Bedford for like $14 at Amazon [amazon]
What I Made [whatimade.com via boingboing]

Did you ever get the sense that there is a lot more going on in the Playmobil world than your local toyseller is telling you about?

Search for 5425 - Playmobil Alpine Cow Festival on eBay, where it looks to be $34.99 and up, shipped from Europe [ebay via @ianbogost]
Try to buy the Playmobil Alpine Cow Festival on Amazon, where it's slightly more [amazon]

When devoted gun guy Aaron Coston found out his wife was expecting their first child, he knew what he had to do: design and build the kid a crib inspired by the craftsmanship and innovation of firearms legend John Browning.

And somehow he pulled it off with remarkable subtlety and refinement, and now Coston has shared the story with the readers of Gun & Tactics.

The front rail is shaped like two stocks from the 1894 Winchester. The back rail has cutouts reminiscent of his grandpa's 20 gauge Browning Auto 5 which, Coston points out, conform to the federal crib standards [which, I'd point out, are a data-driven, safety-inspired government regulation that Coston apparently does not find outrageous or objectionable]. There are black-finished steel stock posts [also safely spaced], and much more, but my absolute favorite detail of all has to be the .45 ACP cartridges Coston used to cover the bolt holes. A truly elegant solution.

Whatever your views on gun policy, I think we can all agree that this is one hell of a crib build. May all Costons big and small sleep through the night.

Starting Them Early [gunandtactics via gundesign via @langealexandra]

And the NSA is releasing the full, unedited version of Sendak's wonderful, touching phone interview with Terry Gross from 2011.

image: Twitter user @7im, aka Tim Dickinson's contribution to #NSAKidsBooks [via guardian, which also flagged the awesome There's Waldo]

I would go so far as to say that the Booty brand gives Cream of Wheat and Ortega taco shells a run for their money in terms of consumer recognition. Or maybe it's just another niche, like molasses. Anyway, $80 million/year in sales, around a 20% margin, and a 2x multiple, the guy who realized he could sell uptight organic yuppie parents Cheetos if he made them kale-colored will get around $195 million for all his efforts.

B&G Foods to Buy Pirate Brands | Quick Facts [rttnews]
Jan 2013: B&G Foods looking for next orphaned brand to adopt [marketwatch]

Until I read Christine Jones' article, I basically didn't know anything about Charles Perreault, whose 1697 collection Histoires ou contes du temps passé , Stories or Tales of Passed Times, was eventually translated into English with the title from this illustration, Contes de ma mère l'Oye, Tales of Mother Goose. And though I knew about Cendrillon, I didn't even realize Mother Goose was French.

But I still feel confident in saying this was probably the most interesting extended discussion of the historical impact of bootleg Amsterdam translations reshuffling the order of the stories had on transforming Perreault's work from literary-minded adult fiction into moralizing children's tales that I'll ever read.

Though I do wish she'd gone into more depth discussing the sheer 1950 suckitude of Disney's Sleeping Beauty, which is a horrible, horrible telling of a story filled with boring or insipid characters. Watch it as an adult and tell me I'm wrong. You can't do it.

Anyway, get yourself caught up on the latest developments in Perreault and mère l'Oye Studies.

Mother Goose's French Birth (1697) and British Afterlife (1729) [publicdomainreview.org via berfrois]

What? The? Hell? Why was I not informed of this?

Watching pseudo-dystopian New Coke mascot Max Headroom reciting the alphabet from the 1987 season of Sesame Street with your kid gives you the chance to explain how people once thought that in the future, we'd all be divided into warring tribes based around our favorite TV channels. Crazy days.

Max Headroom on Sesame Street (1987) [youtube via dt reader rolf]