When I was pregnant with my son, his father’s family kept mentioning how twins run in the family. My sister-in-law gave birth to twins the year before, so I took the threat seriously. My answer was always the same: If I have twins, don’t bother bringing me home from the hospital.

I know there are plenty of families of twins and triplets and beyond, and it’s really cool. But can you imagine eight? Of course, it might be like anything colder than 10 degrees where it’s just cold and you plow through. And, everyone knows, families aren’t asked what they can handle, they just do it. That’s why families are so wonderful and important, in whatever form they take.

All the babies born Tuesday are breathing on their own and doing well, and are only the second set of octuplets born in the U.S. I love the end about the mother starting to pump milk. I very much hope she has a chance to do anything else in the next year.

We’ve got a great sale going on right now. Plus, if you enter coupon code WINTER09 at checkout, you get 15% off regularly-priced items as well!

We were in…

Denver Post print & denverpost.com on December 2, 2008 – Lifestyle

Featuring Sophie the Giraffe

We have a bunch of great new playsets from PlanToys, and we’re working on getting some more detail photos to go with them.

When you see the whole set, it’s hard to see all the fun pieces included, so I’m zooming in on different parts to show some of these details.

Do these detail photos help you make decisions about what to order? Is there anything on the site you’d like to see more closely? Let us know!

I’m always annoyed Valentine’s Day seems to come just as my New Year’s resolution to eat right and lose weight is starting to fade.

In my quest for non-candy presents, I came across these two gorgeous Flensted Mobiles: Love D’Amour and Happy Hearts. Both are far less fattening than chocolate and way longer lasting than flowers.

For angel lovers, Haba’s Heart Angel would be a great gift.

One of my son’s favorite parties was a February birthday where they decorated heart-shaped boxes (I still have to have it on my dresser), and we’ve got a Heart Box craft set perfect for such parties.

If you’re talking about kids exchanging cards, your non-candy Valentines have to be really cool if you want to avoid toothbrush-for-Halloween syndrome. Luckily, we have some really great toys small and inexpensive enough to bring for the whole class:

• Monkey Pencils
• Racing Cars
• Moving Mice
• Yo-Yos
• Tops

And if you’re getting the first gift for your new little Valentine (congratulations!), we have some great heart-themed baby necessities:

• Heart Clip
• Heart Rattle
• Heart Pacifier Chain
• and many more

Having a Super Bowl party? If your kids are anything like mine, the build-up excitement is really fun, but once everyone sits down to watch the game, they get really bored really fast.

Melissa & Doug has a couple of cute products for kids too young to throw around a real football (and, if you’re somewhere too cold to play outside, they’re easier on the furniture and knickknacks): Fill and Spill Sports Bag and Sports Balls in a Mesh Bag.

If you’d like the kids gathered round the table, one great activity is decorating cookies or cupcakes in team colors. The Cardinals and the Steelers are playing this year and their colors are red and white (Cardinals), and yellow and black (Steelers). Black’s kind of an icky deal for frosting though, so white and yellow, with cut up black licorice or sprinkle accents is just as good.

Both the team logos are pretty simple this year, so older kids might like trying to put the team logos on cookies. Painting the logos or key game scenes is also a fun activity.

Knowing some fun facts about the teams will also help kids take a more lasting interest. For instance, the Cardinals have been a team for more than 100 years (though not always in Arizona). In my son’s case, that’s older than great-grandma! And they’ve never been to a Super Bowl, but the Steelers have won four.

For more trivia, games and funny mascot videos, the NFL has a kids page.

Next week our planet will be a blaze of color and light as people all over the world celebrate Chinese, or Lunar, New Year on January 26.

My son and I had fun looking at moon phases on the calendar to figure out when Chinese New Year might be this year: usually the second new moon after the winter solstice (sometime between Dec. 19 and 22). We talked a lot about how the sun is better for tracking time in days, but the moon probably was better at tracking time in months before paper calendars were widely available.
We also had fun talking about transitioning to the the Year of the Ox. We looked at what years we were born in (like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, he decided his Tiger beat my Rat even if it is still my year), and made some predictions about what might happen this year.

The most exciting thing for my son is the importance dragons play in Chinese New Year. YouTube has a great selection of Dragon Dances to watch.

And we made our own dragons! This craft is easy and can be easily tailored to many different age groups. All you need are some empty egg cartons, string and paint.

Want more dragons? We’ve got toys, books and more to bring luck and fun in the coming year.

We are adding new products and brands all the time here at KangarooBoo, and they’re all great!

Kathe Kruse is our newest brand, and the toys are made in Germany. I am really impressed with the Kathe Kruse puzzles. The colors are beautiful and each block is delicately detailed with metallic paint.

New moms will love all the infant and baby toys as well. Many are made with organic materials, and they squeak, hold pacifiers, and generally give comfort. Poupsis, giraffes and stars are just some of the unusual creatures from Kathe Kruse.

I really like the Kathe Kruse dolls, especially the Nature Conservation Angel. What a gorgeous little girl! The Mini It’s Me Winter Doll is also incredible. You can tell by the description I wrote how much I love all her beautiful details and extras.

Take a look at all the fabulous new Kathe Kruse products and let us know what you think!