Fighting Monsters: Extra Life 2014

Next weekend, Jim, Ranger and I will fight some real-world monsters in our third annual Extra-Life board game marathon for Riley Hospital for Childen who gave our Rogue a life-saving cranial surgery in 2012.

Rogue is doing great these days, and we want to help other families who are going through heavy medical concerns like injuries, illnesses and developmental needs.

Riley is a special hospital where kids and their parents are cared for together. My eyes tear up when I remember the parent cart that circulates the hospital dispensing toiletries and other small items for caregivers staying with a patient. The smallest things are monumental when you don't want to leave an infant's bedside even for a moment.

If you want to change a life with your donation, Riley Hospital for Children is a great choice. Not only are they healing kids from Indiana and the rest of the world, they also contribute important research to the global medical community.

Please consider donating to Riley Hospital during Extra Life. Even spare change, added to other's spare change, will change lives for the better.

As an added incentive, if my fundraising goal is met by Sunday, October 25th at 6PM, Jim and I will live-tweet the 1982 made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters over Halloween weekend. 

One randomly drawn donor with a Mazes and Monsters note attached to their donation will win our second-hand copy of the movie! I will mail the DVD to the winner or the winner's designee (offer limited to the United States; substitution of Amazon Instant Watch Credit may also be available).

Please help me reach my goal for Riley kids and their families.

How bad is Mazes and Monsters?

That bad. And yes, that's Tom Hanks. We may own the only copy of the movie he hasn't personally purchased and destroyed.

Why is he screaming?
Well, not to spoil anything, I suspect it may be the hats...

Or scenes about painting miniatures...

Share some serious joy- donate to Riley today! Don't forget to note Mazes and Monsters if you want at a chance at the DVD!

Together we can slay real monsters!

***Baby Toolkit is the epistolary adventures of some geek parents and their family.  We're Amazon associates, so if you click on any Amazon links, a small portion of their profits comes to us. We use those funds to keep the digital homefires burning. We have no relationship with whoever produced or distributed this laughably bad film. You can also find us using our big people voices at GreatBigTable.com, a podcast about board games and the communities they inspire. Thanks for reading the fine print. 

Hairband Carabiner 2.0: A Hack and a Hitch

I've been a Parent Hacks fan since early days. Way back in 2009, when Asha posted about storing hairbands on a carabiner, my only daughter was mostly bald, but already a rabid anti-hair accessory activist. The only efficient place for our hairbands was in the donate box.

A few years and a second girl later, I'm now corralling two sizes of ponytail holders.

A local friend reminded me of this hack. Apparently her daughter had hair in 2009. The hack worked well in holding the bands, but not in sorting them.

Without really long hair, my kids need two bands each for ponytails. Though I have unintentionally left the house wearing one neon green sneaker and one white one, my daughters are a bit more particular about things matching.

I didn't like wrestling the bands around on a scavenger hunt for identical pairs.

So, some of the bands got hitched.

Please excuse the photo quality. These are the fastest pictures I could get, not the best.

1. Do I know you? You look so familiar.

2. Hanging Out Together.

3. Twister?

4. What a cute couple!

5. Finding community.

For simplicity's sake, I keep the two sizes on separate carabiners. One ring for each kid makes morning prep simpler at home and traveling.

A second ponytail holder can be hooked into a singleton already on the ring. It's pretty easy to reunite recently rediscovered bands.

Happy hacking, friends!

***Baby Toolkit is the product of a geek marriage in the middle Midwest. We have also produced three children who cannot under any circumstances agree upon the same meal. We have a periodic podcast about board games and the groups they inspire at GreatBigTable.com. Our opinions are our own, are organically grown if you don't count the radiation from space, and are harvested irregularly at odd intervals. We are Amazon affiliates, but aren't sure about the future of that relationship. If you buy stuff through those links, we make a small percentage that we'll squander on domain names or internet connectivity. Thanks!