Delightfully stressful scenario: Some 9-year-old who’s already drowning in possessions invites your kid to his or her birthday. You need an appropriate gift, but what? My friend Julie thought she had it nailed: A Swiss Army Knife! Classic, cunning, status-y, and besides, didn’t Angelina Jolie buy Maddox one? Big mistake: The birthday child’s mother reacted […]

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While no few parents are perfect, most try their best, especially in areas such as birthday-cake baking where public failure is particularly awkward. Just ask Guinever, a mommy blogger who inadvertently created this object (right) for her son’s fourth birthday. Allegedly a dinosaur, it looks more like a piece of half-digested asparagus. As she explains, […]

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