Philippe Morgese is a single father who worked hard to teach himself how to style his daughter’s hair. Doing a girl’s hair is something most men have no experience with, and it’s a great bonding experience. As he got better at it, Morgese shared his expertise with other dads, and even begin holding free Daddy Daughter Hair Factory classes in Daytona Beach, Florida. As word got around, salons and hair care vendors got involved, and he began to hold classes in other towns. He says: 

I love watching these dads step up to learn how to do their daughter's hair. I've had mechanics, prison guards and construction workers in there braiding with the best of em. Lol. It's been incredible to watch those relationships grow right in front of my eyes. The best part is doing this all with my 9 year old daughter by my side. I get to show her how powerful good intentions are and how much influence we have on the world around us. It's been a beautiful adventure for both of us.

Morgese has a Facebook community, and is working on an online manual for men who can’t attend the classes. There’s a tremendous amount of interest- witness this long comment thread full of men (and probably some women) discussing ways to detangle a little girl’s curly hair. In the picture above, Scott and other dads who never had long hair themselves learn to make rope braids at a recent class. -via reddit

Arnold Lobel wrote Frog and Toad Are Friends in 1970, which was thankfully a different world at the time. What would the most famous works of children's literature be like if they were written in 2015? Kristi Olberding of Distractify has 9 photoshopped covers to show you. I can't even . . . .

After a meeting with a doctor 11 years ago in which she was given the grim prognosis, Amber Bartlett believed she was unable to have any more children. Amber has an autoimmune disorder that requires her to have regular infusions of medicines in order to maintain her health.

Bartlett was surprised to learn she was pregnant in early 2015. She decided to go through with what would be a high-risk pregnancy during which she'd be unable to continue with her medicines and treatment. Thankfully, Bartlett delivered a healthy baby boy and named him Ezra.

In celebration of the blessed event, Amber and her family, all major Star Wars fans, decided to do a newborn shoot with her sister, photographer Trish McCoy, that was themed around their favorite franchise. As you can see from the photos above and below, little Ezra looks sweet alongside his new friends.  

See the photographer's Facebook photo album with all of her pictures of baby Ezra here.

Images: Trish McCoy | Via Design Taxi

(Photo: Courtney Solstad)

"I'm going to wet my pants!"

"Don't do that!" says the mom.

Santa Claus came early for the Solstad family of McKinney, Texas. The little girls asked him for a baby brother. And they got one! The family adoped baby Nathan, who arrived as an early Christmas gift.

(Video Link)

The Daily Telegraph reports:

They all jumped around and screamed with excitement about the new baby boy. […]

The mother wrote that welcoming Nathan into the family was “one of the most magical experiences in our lives.”

“We prayed big things and God answered in big ways,” she wrote. “Our little guy is so incredibly perfect.”

Many of us recall looking through the Guinness Book of World Records and seeing the entry for the mother with the most children. When I had the paperback version (yes, it’s a real book, and once upon a time many people owned it), it referred to a Russian woman who allegedly had 69 children. She had twins, triplets, and quadruplets in order to add up that many babies. Oh yes, there’s more to the story than was printed at the time.

Mrs. Feodor Vassilyev, a Russian peasant who lived in the 1700s, holds the official Guinness World Record for the highest number of children birthed. She and her husband, Feodor, lived in Shuya, Russia. We don’t know her first name (although some sources say her name was Valentina), but we do know that she's claimed to have given birth to 16 sets of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets in her childbearing years (1725 to 1765). Only two children didn’t survive past infancy, leaving her with 67 healthy children.

What makes the Vassilyev story even weirder is that Feodor apparently had another 18 children (six sets of twins and two sets of triplets) with his second wife. Although it sounds implausible, a few primary sources and contemporaneous accounts about the Vassilyevs exist.

You are forgiven for being skeptical, but first read about the documents that led us to what we know about Mrs. Vassilyev and her family that put Mother Hubbard to shame, at mental_floss.   

Bonus: I also found out that the founder of the Guinness Brewery that later gave rise to the records book, Arthur Guinness, and his wife Olivia had 21 children.

(Image credit: Flickr user Dave Herholz)

Dr. Robert Hamilton Pacific Ocean Pediatrics in Santa Monica, California has been working at his craft for 26 years. He knows all about caring for children, including how to get upset babies calm. When they get painful injections at his office, he uses a particular technique that soothes them almost instantly.

You can skip to the 1:01 mark in this video to see Dr. Hamilton use what he calls "the Hold." Pick up an infant according to it and, as Dr. Hamilton says, "shake their booty."

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-via Twisted Sifter

Kids are dropping their nursery rhymes and Doodlebop tracks at an early age these days, trying to follow in the footsteps of their rock lovin' parents and get their garage bands started early.

That's all well and good for the preteens, but how are you going to get your kindergartner off to school when they're too busy rockin' out on the drums?

(YouTube Link)

The young drummer in the video is five-year-old Eduarda Henklein-Baterista, the song is System Of A Down's "Chop Suey", and the time is sometime after SpongeBob but before bedtime.

-Via Loudwire

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The key phrase that a father must say in this scenario is: "Don't tell your mother about this."

Jarrad Provost of Fredericksburg, Virginia attached a leaf blower to his son Roman's Power Wheels battery-powered toy car. This means that the tyke is ready to take on the chore of clearing off fallen leaves--a task normally given to an older child.

The car may not have enough power to move over rough terrain, so I suggest setting Roman up on an ATV for other areas. Then hire him out to the neighbors. Cut Roman in for a percentage, and Provost has a profitable business in the making.

-via Technabob

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Put down the phone, fellow fathers. Right now, you're supposed to be watching your kids. They're not safe out of your sight for even a second. Just glance away to read or send a text and the worst thing has happened to your precious children in that moment.

Dad Dudes, which is a comedy production group consisting of four real-life dads, created this thoughtful PSA to warn dads to stop texting and start paying attention.

-via Laughing Squid

Maria Bradley is a special effects and makeup artist. Among other media, she paints the bellies of pregnant women.

We've seen baby bump paintings before, but Bradley takes this trendy art form to a whole new level. She's a special effects artist, so she knows how to add an element of horror to the experience. For her own belly, she created a 3d form of her child breaking out. She explained the process to Baby Center UK:

With special effects I love to shock people. I brought a second-hand doll and casted the face using clay then pored Kryolan Gelafix skin into the clay mould. I removed the cast and glued it to my own belly. I then used liquid latex and tissue to cover the moulds to try and make it look like the baby is pushing its head through the skin. I then painted it all with foundation to blend it in with my skin tone.

-via io9

(Photo: Tara Smith-Adkins)

Tara Smith-Adkins of Halifax, Nova Scotia wants to make sure that the homeless people in her town don't want for warm winter coats. So every year, she rounds up local kids to walk around town, tying coats and scarves to trees and signposts in the area.

(Photo: Halifolks)

This year, the event served as her daughter's eighth birthday party. She and seven of her friends tied up the coats with little tags explaining what they were for. The CBC reports:

The children wrapped lamp poles with coats bundled with either scarves or mittens. Each item had a tag that read "I am not lost! If you are stuck out in the cold, please take me to keep warm!"

-via 123 Inspiration

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Ethan Hall is just seven years old. He had been given an important task: singing the song of his people before a crowd watching him at the beginning of a baseball game.

It was the worst possible time to get hiccups. But Ethan did.

This took place at Cooper's Stadium in Adelaide, Australia. Ethan started hiccuping at the beginning of his performance of "Advance Australia Fair." But he kept right on going, maintaining his composure and the dignity of his homeland's national anthem.

As the color commentator for the game says at the end of the video, Ethan's performance was "absolutely priceless."

-via Huffington Post

When PSAs talk about all the ways alcoholism can ruin your life and the lives of your loved ones they have a hard time painting a picture ugly enough to match the real face of the eternally drunk.

But the horrifying PSAs created for Finland's Fragile Childhood campaign are terrifying enough to drive the point home- straight through the eyeballs.

(YouTube Link)

The PSAs were created to scare kids into looking for warning signs that their parents are drinking the day away, but they're so frightening that some kids might start thinking their parents are actually monsters in disguise!

-Via Boing Boing

In 1971, Big Bird made friends with a creature called Mr. Snuffleupagus. But the adults of Sesame Street never saw Snuffy, and thought he was Big Bird’s imaginary friend. That went on for 14 years!

Norman Stiles (Writer/Head Writer, 1971-1995): The character was kind of a collaboration between [executive producer] Jon Stone and Jim Henson. I think the initial idea was really to be ambiguous in the sense that, well, Big Bird says he’s real and the audience sees him and yet he always manages to not be there when the other people were there—so is he real or isn’t he real? The whole idea was to not really answer that, but to leave it as an open question.  

Emilio Delgado (“Luis,” 1971-Present): It was going with the whole thing of a child’s imaginary playmate, which a lot of kids have. Big Bird was the only one who could see him. When adults came around, he would be talking about Snuffy this, and Snuffy that. We’d just say, "Yeah, sure, OK." We didn’t believe him.

Carol-Lynn Parente (Executive Producer, 2005-Present): There was a lot of humor to be mined from the issue. We never explained whether he was imaginary or not. Kids were able to see him, but adults couldn’t. You never really knew—was he imaginary? Playing with that question was a lot of fun; kind of a healthy ambiguity.  

Stiles: You really had to believe that it was just terrible coincidences and quirks of Snuffy’s own personality that made it so that he just wasn’t there when Big Bird wanted him to be there to introduce him to his friends.

Then in 1985, the Sesame Street adults all found out that Big Bird had been telling the truth all along! For 14 years. The entire 1984-85 season was used to lay the groundwork for the “big reveal.” The writers, Muppeteers, and producers explain why Snuffy came out, and how they went about doing it the way they did, in a conversation at mental_floss. You can also watch a video of the big moment. 

(Image credit: Sesame Street via Facebook)

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It’s a fact of life: children do not want to follow a schedule. Playing is too much fun to stop and go to sleep, and sleeping is too comfortable to bother wake up when it’s time to go to school. Reed Verdesoto describes the struggle well in a parody of “Shut up and Dance” by Walk the Moon. For a man who’s been deprived of proper sleep for days, he sings it well. -via Viral Viral Videos