the Wry Baby Blog

Nothing spells trouble like the gift of a Nerf shooting device and no targets. I picked up my son’s gift from Santa, the Nerf N-Strike Raider Rapid Fire CS-35 (the longer the name the cooler the weapon), and even I almost got into trouble as I eyed the delicate, thin glass of our chandelier bulbs and the cat. So, quickly, I got to work making some targets for the Boy out of all the Christmas debris spread all over the house. It took only an hour and in the end the house was clean and the Boy stays out of trouble. For a while at least.

Tools needed: Trash. A Pen. Tape or Hot Glue. A desire not to have stuff broken all over your house.

Here’s how easy this is. Draw some bad guy Monsters on sheets of cardboard trash and cut them out. Oh, don’t give me tha”But I can’t draw!” stuff. That’s why they’re Monsters and not horses. Now horses are impossible to draw. Anyway, at the bottom of each head or whatever, leave some cardboard to fold back like a little stand. Then take another piece of cardboard trash, cut it into a strip and tape or hot glue it to that stand piece and the back of the target (see photo below).

IMPORTANT: They don’t have to be pretty! After all, this is all about keeping your stuff from being all shot up and not about winning a prize at the fair. Anyway, look how slapdash mine turned out. Basically at this point you’re done. BUT there are still some other fun things you can do from here:

1. Have your child color them in. Thereby keeping them out of trouble for at least 30 more minutes!
2. Name and Rank them. Which is the leader? Are there drones that need taking down first? Write their info on the backs of the targets and create a fun back story with your child.
3. Imagine up some fun games. Get the ball rolling by hiding the targets all around the house while your child hides their eyes. Send them on a mission to take down the alien home invasion! Or maybe set them all up in one room and time your child to see how fast they can clear the room of the alien menace. What’s their best time?

You get the idea! Have a great holiday and good hunting from the pals who got your back at Wry Baby.

Looking for more fun things to do with Junior & Juniorette? Check out our New Parents Fun Book for more unique games and crafts and, for some soapy fun, pick up our Pirate Hooded Towel. A secret code on the label will get you access to some great bath time papercrafts. Exclusively from the brainiacs at wrybaby.com.

Looking to make a super baby website? Wry Baby has teamed up with BabyJellyBeans.com, the premier baby website creation platform for parents, to bring new parents fun new website templates for Junior’s first Interweb experience. Designs from our funny baby clothes and baby shower gifts make perfect frames for your baby’s photos, videos and more.

BabyJellyBean’s baby website templates are not only easy to work with, but they’re also super fun to build. Add hilarious parenting flair to your baby’s website by choosing your own Proud Parent Pins to post, pick and choose your family’s line-up BFFs or simply enjoy the baby hairdo slideshow in the Hairdo Maker baby website template.

Stop by BabyJellyBeans.com for the funnest baby websites ever!

Our son’s elementary school asked us to throw down and organize a “station” for their Fall Festival. We decided to do a photo booth, where kids stick their heads into a painted scene, we take a snap and print it right there on a portable printer. It was a fun project and didn’t take long at all. The only hang up was, in the deep South, Halloween is a seriously verboten topic. So out went our plans for the way fun Headless Ghost scene and in came our treacly, less threatening Scarecrow in the Field scene. Either way it was a blast and the kids loved it. Try it for yourself when you celebrate “Fall, not the Devil’s Birthday” this year.

Our preference was to do this fun headless graveyard scene. But then, we’re weird.

Just an idea, some paint and some plywood is all you need for this fun, Fall craft!

Still feeling crafty? Check out our re-boot of the boring baby journal, The New Parents’ Fun Book. It’s chock full of fun games, crafts, sticker albums and all kinds of crazy crafty fun. Just $12.95 at wrybaby.com!

We took a company vacation over Spring Break to cruise down to Mexico to crawl around some Mayan Ruins. If you’ve never been on a cruise, they have formal nights in the dining room where you and the other 2997 of you dress in your fanciest of fancys. They take your picture before dinner against a beautiful backdrop on loan from the Sears Portrait Studio and it’s all very elegant. Unless you’re cruising with the Wry Baby family who takes every opportunity to goof around.

We do not recommend trying to eat through Lucha Libre masks. Also, we found them to be increadibly hot. Otherwise, a good idea for shaking up any stuffy situation.

Kelly and I loves us our iPhones. It’s no secret that we also love being parents. So it’s only fitting we should meld our favorite life-changing things together: iPhone + Parenting = ?

Wry Baby’s been working super hard with the good people at Paze Interactive to bring you a little prezzie for your pocket. It’s in Apples approval hopper now and we expect to launch in Apple’s iTunes App Store in a couple of weeks. Anyone care to guess what our first Wry Baby iPhone App might be? The first person who correctly guesses what our iPhone app is (in the comments to this post) will be sent a FREE original, analog version of our Wry Baby iPhone app’s inspiration.* Go nuts and have fun!

• CONTEST RULES: Friends and family are totally excluded becuase they should be punished for being in our inner circle and because we probably already told them all about this. Entrants must supply us with their real email addresses because if you win, we’ll have to email you to find out where you want your prize sent. Contest results will be posted after our fun new app launches (approx. two weeks from 3/9/09). By entering, you agree that Wry Baby reserves the right to make (and own outright) an iPhone app of any guesses regardless of how ridiculous, physically impossible, fiscally irresponsible, pattently imporbable or plain, flat-out genius.

So what would you like your child to be? A savvy city dweller like yourself? A Rock Star? Perhaps in these economic times just having a plain old Rich Kid would suit the bill. Our Spring 09 line of new baby outfits are now available at a store near you and, secretly, on wrybaby.com. These classic cotton snapsuit and black legging sets will turn your baby into the Instant Rock Star (Let’s Trash This Place!), Instant Urbanite (Yo! Taxi!) or Instant Rich Kid (Ask Me About My Trust Fund.) of your dreams.

Be the first on your block to be the coolest parent ever…Instantly!

Each outfit comes in a snazzy gift box and are just $32 ea. at a store near you, or at wrybaby.com And if your favorite store doesn’t have them, let us know! Help us get in there and there might be something in it for you!

I spotted this a while back on the papercraft-world blog and now that I’m faced with wrapping all the clever little gifts I’m sending out, this is a perfect time to post it. Via papercraft-world, I headed to dozidesign’s blog for an excellent, insanely simple tutorial on making these perfect paper roses. I’m planning white wrapping paper, red ribbon and one of these roses in the corner. Only huge. And made out of bacon instead of paper.

How cute is this? If I had a little girl I’d fill her room with these easy-to-make paper roses. But I have a boy. So I’m stuck making paper DS systems and stuff that looks like boogers.

Got more time on your hands? Head over to wrybaby.com and pick up our New Parents’ Fun Book and you’ll find a little papercraft Father Figure you can construct to hold the little paper bouquet you just made! Cute!

The New Parents’ Fun Book is availalbe nationwide for $12.95 at almost any bookstore large and small as well as at little old wrybaby.com

Even when that custom Halloween costume came off the rack. We funny baby clothes making goofballs here at Wry Baby figure that if you can’t decide which costume to wear out on the big night, why not wear both?

Also notice that’s a Spiderman candy bucket. 3 outfits in 1!!

See other costumes that are already too clever to alter at wrybaby.com. Our Super Snapsuit is an excellent choice for boys and girls and they’re available now for just $30. Make every day super!

Did you know that the few days before Halloween are the busiest times for ghosts, witches and other flying types of Halloween goulies? It’s true! They’re busy carting around Halloween candy, Halloween toys, plastic spiders, rubbers snakes and all kinds of treats in preparation for the big scary day. And if you haven’t noticed, Witches don’t have a lot of trunk space on those brooms. And Ghosts, well, they have a hard time holding on to all that stuff seeing as how they’re more or less vaporous. That’s why our family builds Candy Catchers every October!

Each morning, take a peek together to see if anyone (or anything) dropped any Halloween goodies during the night!

All you need is an empty oatmeal tub or milk carton, some white glue, safety scissors, color construction paper and some twine or string. Simply decorate your container with Halloweeny type creatures, run the twine through and hang it in a tree out in your yard. Now the fun part begins!

Your candy catcher can be any old spooky thing. Have fun with it! Be sure to place it in an open area for maximum candy catching.

Once your Candy Catcher is all set up, explain the idea to your little goblin. Then, every night, sneak out after bed time to drop a treat into the catcher. Maybe it’s just one Tootsie Roll. Maybe the next night it’s a plastic zombie finger and some other fun Halloween toys. Use your imagination! When you check the catchers in the morning, you can both have fun trying to figure out who (or what) might have dropped each bit of treasure!

One word of caution: While this is probably the funnest tradition you’ll share during Halloween, be sure not to do this too early. We got too excited one year and hung ours on the first of October. I was going outside every night all month long filling up the Catcher! Too much of a good thing, Friends! Keep this in mind when you launch your Candy Catching project.

Need a snuggly Fall Halloween outfit for baby to check his/her catcher in? Look no further than our exclusive cute baby Halloween outfit. Only $28 and only available at wrybaby.com. And check out the other fun Halloween baby clothes from the goopy brains of your pals at Wry Baby.

Your baby is the cutest. Ever. Your baby should adorn the cover of every baby magazine. But why stop at the parenting mags? Why, your child is stunning and could conceivably grace any magazine from Rockstar to Motormania to True American. If you agree, head over to magmypic.com and get started on your PR assault. Simply upload your tots visage to your choice of magazine and voila! Instant fame! It’s free, but you can pay to have a glossy print of your creation sent to you. Buy 50 of them, glue them to the covers of 50 real magazines and leave them at your local newsstand! That’s what I did with mine.

Wry Baby founder and famous cover boy, Dave Sopp, poses in his jam jams. Too bad they spelled “maternity” incorrectly.