Kids

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Another birthday means another party theme, and *cue deep thought* — figuring out how to entertain a bunch of kids! Even if the theme is as specific as “Doll and Donut Dance” of all things, do not panic — I got you.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! My earliest memories of getting presents all revolve around LEGOs. I still remember my very first sets: a tow truck, a family car, and a little road repair cart. Those initial gifts turned into a lifelong love of the plastic building bricks.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Every time I saw an ad for the Yoto Player peppering my social media feed, I was totally fascinated. Bright, colorful, completely kid-controlled — what’s not to love?

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! As adults, we only really get one day a year to dress up and play “make believe” without feeling totally out of place, right? The occasion is called Halloween, and it’s still months away … sigh.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. When I was a kid, family game night usually ended with someone toppling the board, hurling tokens and fake money, and stomping to their room in anger and frustration at losing AGAIN to a craftier player. (When I say “someone” I mean 4-year-old me.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Flashback fashion has been having a fierce renaissance in the last few years, and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t completely here for it.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. Join us over on Instagram for more! Let’s face it: After spending much of last summer cooped up inside of our homes, we’re all itching for some serious adventure in the coming months. That said, if 2021 is anything like last year, the highways could be jammed up with all kinds of road-trippers.

For the pun-loving father-figures in our lives, we made this deliciously fun coloring card. Let your soup-er star know just how much you love him! Just download, print, color, and fold it up.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. We all want our kids to get outside and be active. We also long for those seemingly elusive toys that allow our kids to play while we sit back and relax. Enter: active toys with wheels.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. As we welcome warmer weather, newly skinned knees and shoulders tinted red like lobsters have us thinking about all the items we need to stock up on for summer first aid. Unlike the kit we have floating around in the car, you might need a few extras beyond band-aids and bacitracin for summer care.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. I know exactly what toys my soon-to-be 5-year-old wants at all times — except for when her birthday actually rolls around. All the grandparents and aunties call to ask what to get her, and frankly — I’ve forgotten almost everything we talked about over the past year.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. You know those friends that are more like family? And then they get pregnant and have families of their own? There’s nothing like it. Those are the people you really want to cherish and spoil.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. In a year of multi-tiered catastrophes, parents, teachers, and caregivers have been uniquely challenged in guiding children through our radical situation. We need resources to answer children’s questions and give them frameworks through which to understand their own and others’ experiences.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. The first blush of warm weather always feels like a rebirth to me, but with hope for the pandemic’s abatement on the horizon (huzzah!), I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited for summer.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. My best memories of being on the road with my parents are the pit stops at gas stations. My mom would hand me a five-dollar bill ($10 if we were flush!) and let me go wild in the convenience store. Then I’d snack happily all the way to our destination, oblivious to the sea of crumbs and wrappers littering our backseat.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. When we first started bathing our son in the regular tub instead of the bitsy infant one, he was so excited that he was allllllll over the place — pulling himself up here, bonking his head there. Add water to the mix and it was nothing short of terrifying.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. My family is notorious for holding onto sentimental objects, but no one is a more avid, let’s say, collector than my mother. Her sewing room is stacked with bins of my artwork from childhood: cards with sloppy handwriting, a slightly alarming sketch of Pongo from “101 Dalmations.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. I like to think of myself as the queen of what I call “horizontal parenting.” As someone living with chronic kidney disease, I knew I would have days when I couldn’t be as active as other mothers, fathers, and caretakers.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. We’ve all seen them: those idyllic scenes of children helping with the family garden on social media. Perhaps they are barefoot or wearing an adorably muddy pair of boots. There’s a close up of tiny hands holding colorful fresh laid eggs. A perfectly pastoral scene.

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. April means many things: spring gardening, warmer temperatures, and seemingly endless weeks of rain. After a punishing winter, I’m not going to bemoan the weather too much, but that doesn’t stop my 4-year-old from literally hanging upside down on the couch from soul-crushing ennui. (You think I’m being dramatic?

This piece was created for Cubby, our weekly newsletter for families at home. Want more? Sign up here for a weekly splash of fun and good ideas for families with kids. The face mask market is a booming industry that will not likely be slowing down any time soon. What seemed like such an odd thing to put on a year ago is now as routine as putting on our shoes.