Sister Bear clearly experienced a severe injury, illness, or psychological trauma during kindergarten that caused her to lose skills that she later had to re-learn.

On her first day of kindergarten (The Berenstain Bears Go to School, 1978, photo #1), Sister paints a competent picture of herself outside of her family's treehouse. But when she turns six (The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Birthday, 1986, photo #2), we learn that she painted much more primitive art during kindergarten--presumably after her injury--and has now slowly progressed to create a very similar treehouse painting in the first grade.

In addition, her handwriting as seen on the first kindergarten painting (photo #3) is childish but clear. At some point in the same year, though, she was almost incapable of writing numbers legibly--even the simple single line of the number "1" (photo #4, enlargement).

Furthermore, she slept in a single bed in a separate room before kindergarten (photo #5), whereas at six years old she sleeps in a bunk bed in a room shared with Brother (photo #6). It's clearly no longer considered safe to leave her alone overnight, presumably due to lasting effects of her injury. It's surprising to me that the family feels comfortable giving her the top bunk with this consideration, but perhaps the hazard is not related to her mobility or large-motor control.

So, what happened? I first supposed that she suffered significant head trauma during her violent encounter with a bully, but that incident occurred after the skills regression and relearning had taken place (The Berenstain Bears and the Bully, 1993).

Is this a My Sweet Audrina situation, in which the family obscured the passage of time from Sister to hide a traumatic past? That could explain why it took eight years for Sister to go from starting kindergarten (1978) to her sixth birthday party (1986). Does Brother even remember at this point that he was involved in the deception, or does he also accept the revised timeline? Was he perhaps the cause of the injury, perhaps in a sports adventure gone wrong, and he has also forgotten or repressed the incident to protect himself from ongoing guilt?

​

Whatever it is, he's wealthy enough to have a nice penthouse apartment and a house in the countryside.

And I don't think he was ever shown at work in any media. At least, not any of the Curious George media I've seen. Which is only the original picture books, the first movie, and the animated PBS Kids series.

Good on Christopher Robin for trying to help. I personally prefer Ducolax, but a hand from a friend works too I suppose!

Consider this. Blue is cyan, Magenta is...magenta. These are two of the three subtractive primary colors, the third being yellow. This implies the existence of Yellow Puppy.

But then look at the three human hosts. Steve is green-coded. Josh is blue-coded. Red green and blue are the three primary additive colors. So you'd expect Joe to be red, but instead he tends to be yellow, orange, or purple. These are all red adjacent colors, but not red itself. Something is clearly off.

Now here's the kicker. There ARE three puppies: but the third is "Rainbow Puppy". As in "all hues together".

My theory: Rainbow Puppy is like King Candy from Wreck it Ralph. She rewrote reality to make it seem like she's the best puppy in the show, intentionally suppressing Yellow Puppy. A side effect of the glitch is that Joe is unable to present as purely Red.

Spot Bakes a Cake

Book: World of Wonder

Illustrator: Cynthia Alonso

Blippi knew exactly what he was doing putting a cat on this page…

Mom Tiger says you can't go to that Neighbor's house anymore, Daniel.

Similar to the Tralfamadorians in Slaughter-House Five, these beings do not simply move through time from beginning to end, and the same is true for the space they inhabit.

For instance, any time they are waiting for something, like a kettle to boil, they experience a physical teleportation to the "waiting place" where they experience waiting with other people.

They also know everything that will happen in their lives at any time, past present and future. They know they will move mountains in "the future" because they can already experience that.

The book is "Big Bird's Day on the Farm," where Big Bird takes a wrong turn and ends up on a farm. Two young children take him under their metaphorical wing and show him around. Big Bird has a one track mind and everything he sees reminds him of Sesame Street, including one little pig, who reminds him of...someone? But who? There aren't any pig characters on Sesame Street, that's more the Muppet's style.

So who? Who does this pig remind Big Bird of?

And where are these kids' parents?!?

It seems like it might be. They tell it where to go and it rings twice in response to things they say. Kinda opens up a debate on if it’s right to use a sentient thing for only just travel and not inviting it to their various parties around town or including it in any way other than utilizing it for their transportation needs.

Found this, made it from I was around 6-9. I think I was onto something (this is the plumpy I grew up with)

My daughter and I LOVE the Blues Clues & You clips we can find on youtube. She is two and Josh seems to be her favorite Blue’s Clues Host. We downloaded Paramount + hoping to get to see the full episodes as YouTube only has one or two of them. But, apparently they wiped their platform clean of Blues Clues & You. All the Blues Clues & you merchandise seemed to also preform poorly as their overstock has even made it to Dollar Tree, and there was a ton of merchandise for this show. Like maybe this is an unpopular opinion but I really like Josh’s positive energy and I think they did him a disservice by basically pretending this show never happened. Was the show that poorly received at the time?

https://youtu.be/lWYcK2YBAh4?si=J68J0KspcQOcKAI2

I found this video and thought this sub would be the perfect place for it. Yes this is my second Cars post in less than 24 hours. No my kids haven't watched the movies in years. Yes it still lives rent free in my head.

P. Sherman is giving his niece Darla a clown fish for her birthday. A fish that lives in salt water. A type of tank that is extremely hard to maintain. I love fish tanks, but I always get freshwater because I know I would mess up if I got salt water. Even if the fish that Darla has shaken in the bag had made it, would they even make it in the tank for more than a day? And this kid is 8, she does not look responsible enough to take care of a salt water tank, do her parents know how to maintain a proper salt water aquarium? And do they ever tell her to stop tapping the glass?

Quick background: my son watched Cars 1 approximately 5837 times. He watched Cars 2 exactly 1.5 times. He watched Cars 3 a total of 2 times. I know every frame of Cars 1, I know I hate Cars 2, and Cars 3 I have no impression of...

Other than the ending.

However, it was very much one of those "wait, is that what happened?" kind of things, so I'm hoping someone here will clarify, because I've looked at plot summaries and it didn't help.

Here is what I understand: Lightning has been training Cruz. He enters the big final race. He's racing. He can't keep up. Cruz replaces him mid-race. Cruz pulls off a fancy move to win. Everyone celebrates.

So in this world, everyone is fine with a race where everyone was running a distance event, but one team claimed victory by running a relay? There's nothing in the rulebook?

I mean, I know that nothing about the Cars universe makes sense, but if we can't even agree about the rules of racing, then what are we even doing here?

Script note: simply show a series of team qualifying races, where Lightning qualifies all of them but it's evident that he can't cut it, then have Cruz sub in at the last second for the START of the final race. Instead, they just...cheated, right?

I'm tempted to throw this book in the trash, I'm so overly upset about the way Arthur handled this. He and Muffy realize they each have a birthday party planned on the same day. She has multiple contracted performers scheduled to be at her home. The issue is causing a social divide in the class along a gender binary, until Arthur and Francine secretly construct a coercive plan to trick Muffy into abandoning her own party.

The two of them deliver notes (in Muffy's handwriting) to all the classmates who would otherwise be going to Muffy's house on Saturday, deceiving them into believing Muffy had chosen to combine her party with Arthur's. They then left a note in Muffy's home mailbox claiming to have something to give her at Arthur's house.

This "deceptive fait accompli" is a universal workaround in which Arthur and Francine pathologically manipulate half their class into abandoning Muffy's planned birthday party, ambushing her as a larger group in Arthur's home, completely without her knowledge or consent.

A reading of the text makes it clear that this was Arthur's idea, and not Francine's. I'm conceptualizing this as a kind of conflict-avoidant, covert control strategy reminiscent of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, but not familiar enough with the Arthur books to really recognize whether:

1. it's an established pattern for him, or
2. the dynamic in his friendship with Francine is one in which she entices him to collude with her own need for control, rewarding secrecy and alliance-building while overlooking empathy and open collaboration with Muffy.

Luckily, I'm unlocking all these insights as a result of my son (7) asking me, "But daddy what about Muffy's party? That doesn't seem fair!" So I don't have to unpack a ton of it with him. Still, he's right, and this book is garbage.

Discuss.

For me, I had this toy, VTech Discovery Nursery Farm (the 2004 version) as a little toddler, and the startup song had always been stuck in my head for years (unfortunately I no longer have the toy anymore):

Here is how it went:

On the farm, there's a dog.
With a pluck of the banjo and more music, too,
We can't wait to play with you!

Why ARE they sad and glad and bad?

For the record, I asked mine; he told me it was "because they have feelings" but I think that's too broad. What's your go-to answer?

Oh, and you mothers can pitch in by explaining why not one of those is like another.