Remember forts, you guys? Taking whatever sturdy objects were around the house and building as big a fort as you could manage? Thanks to NBC‘s Community, forts are having a moment. But the daughters of comic creator Nick Bertozzi — with the help of a Fort Magic kit, a thing that really exists — have taken their own fortastic journey. Go ahead — take another look at those couch cushions …

(via Fort Magic on Twitter)

Lets get the sad part of the story out of the way up here: Matt Logelin runs a blog (and has written a bestselling book) detailing the struggles he faces as the single dad of a daughter named Maddy. Maddy’s mom, Liz, died of a pulmonary embolism the day after she was born.

Okay, now come back with me to the rest of the story: Maddy’s almost four now, and Logelin, while struggling through his fears of learning to braid hair and travelling with a baby, considered himself to have a stroke of luck in that she was turning into quite the tomboy. He felt well equipped to teacher her about baseball, football, and fishing; the things he did as a kid, but Maddy is also very, very interested in comic book superheroes, and those, he confesses, are completely beyond his experience.

There once was a show called Doctor Who. It ran for a verrrrry long time and had some really, really talented actors. One day, they told us bedtime stories. The end.

Ok, not the end. Doctor Who cast members David Tennant, Alex Kingston, Christopher Eccleston, John Simm, Freema Agyeman and John Barrowman have all taken part in the BBC tradition that is CBeebies. It’s a channel, one of the only free on the BBC, for preschoolers where the final hour of every day is dedicated to bedtime. And at the end of that hour a celebrity reads a bedtime story (actually they read 5 but spread them out over a week). It’s a pretty cool concept and we’re lucky enough that most of them are available on YouTube. I found that Tennant and Agyeman were the best storytellers of the bunch but Simm actually used voices for the characters and that was the last thing I expected from The Master. Go watch the rest and have sweet dreams!

(via GeekMom)

Worried that your little girl might grow up to be a supervillain? Trying to redirect her to heroic tendencies through the use of appropriate toys? Relax. She’s going to do what she wants, and you should support that.

She may just surprise you. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t.

(via /Film.)

Little Stormageddon (Okay, Trent) here and R2 have been, like, super busy lately with work. They’re just excited to have a chance to catch up with each other’s lives.

Okay. Now watch it again and pretend that it’s a normal sized R2-D2 talking to a giant baby.

(via Blastr.)

David Borgenicht is pretty awesome. We have decided this with very little evidence. In fact, our only piece of evidence consists of this, The Star Trek Book of Opposites, a picture book using pictures from Star Trek to illustrate the difference between different books. It is rather silly. In fact, that’s why we love it so. Next time we need to know the antonym to a certain word, we’re consulting this thing.

When invited to a birthday party whose theme required that the boys dress as superheroes and the girls as princesses, dad Jay C. Batzner came up with an awesome compromise that simultaneously stomped on the face of gender normativity and made his daughter happy. Wonder Woman, both a princess and a superhero, had long been Daria’s favorite hero, so he sewed her this costume.  We think this might be one of those steps to raising kickass daughters.

(via Girls Love Superheroes)

During one’s first year of speaking, it is rare that anything truly unique comes out. Usually it’s the standard fare of “Mom/Dad,” “Cat,” “Dog,” “I’m hungy,” etc. Rarely do they quote Star Wars. When their parents do teach them to do so, however, the adorableness might just make the room explode. See for yourself. Not only can this kid imitate the sounds that tigers, cats, monkeys and robots make, but they can also quote Admiral Ackbar’s most famous line. Congratulations, Anonymous Video Parents, you’re kid is probably going to grow up awesome. The look of pride on the father’s face speaks for itself.

(via The Daily What)

This child. This child is the greatest thing. Just look at him, standing in his backyard in his little bow-tie, reciting Matt Smith’s epic Pandorica monologue from Doctor Who. He’s only in kindergarten, but the kid’s already got quite the bravado.

(via Youtube)

“Honey, we’re having a baby!”

“That’s awesome! … I know exactly what we can do with it!”

For the first three years of his son’s life, Deb Roy, a cognitive scientist and director of MIT Media Lab’s Cognitive Machines Group, recorded 90,000 hours of video (that’s 10 hours a day, every day, for three years) on 10 cameras and 14 microphones to study how infants develop their language skills. Why? To see if robots can learn language the same way. This is what happens when scientists have children: they do science to them.