Children today are just too difficult to handle. On one hand, you have their demands & on other hand the expensive items they have demanded. But, it can be really easy to handle all this. You just need to make decisions wisely. Now, children are always interested in the cartoon/comic characters, so instead of buying them a toy for that, why not talk to them & divert their interest towards the cartoon magazines? If you are able to make them understand that magazines are much better then you have succeeded! You need to spend less & they get something educational each and every month. That is a wise investment. You don’t think so? Today, children are very good at learning things, especially when they are made to learn in a way that’s enjoyable and fun. The children’s magazines available these days are a very good source of learning as they teach many important educational topics, what can be better than that? Something helping you out to handle your children as well.
There are a many children magazines available today, some of the most famous titles are:
• Thomas & Friends
• Kid’s Discover
• Discover
• Disney & Me
• Disney’s Princess
• Jack & Jill
• National Geographic for Kids
• Ranger Rick
• Sparkle World
• Wild Animal Baby
• Your Big Backyard
• Zoobooks
• Zoobies
• Zootles

All these magazines stress making a child learn, by using the interests of the child. The magazines like National Geographic for kids are one of a kind offering them to learn new things using amazing pictures.
The children’s magazines aren’t too cheap to subscribe to, but if you search well for the right site, you may find some great offers & you won’t need to think before subscribing. Offering cheap magazine subscriptions makes you happy & the content within will make your child happy for a long time with new issues on a regular basis.
Author Bio:-
Sam is the owner of a Magazine Subscriptions Website offering Cheap Magazine Subscriptions. Sam knows what children need & to fit their needs into your pocket, he is offering children magazines like: Ranger Rick Magazine, Thomas & Friends, Zoobooks, etc. at the cheapest price. Sam also offers subscriptions to various other magazines with many popular titles under every category at the lowest prices possible.

We have a few ‘Thomas & Friends’ books which are a firm favourites of Big Mr.  At the back of each book, they show the names of all the engines in the Thomas series.  One of the engines is called Daisy.  When I pointed her out to Big Mr, he got a very concerned look on his face and enquired:

‘Where’s Oopsy, Mummy?‘

Select DVDs are on sale for $5 at the HiT Shop through May 28, 2009.  Orders of $49 or more receive free ground shipping.  Click on any of the following to see the $5 DVDs available:

Thomas & Friends

Bob the Builder

Angelina Ballerina

Barney

Kipper

Wishbone

Deal: Thomas DVD with double or single trains $6.49  Amazon.com 

It wasn’t really quite a huge hoohah celebration. We had our anniversary quite quiet to ourselves. The Wan took 2 days leave this week and another 3 days the next week. Just to ourselves. I felt like a newly wed all over again and put on my own henna. Messy but still red with love. Thanks to Cik Norsiah (orang Kallang lama) for the inai from Mekah (actually direct thanks to Kak Fidz who went for the pilgrim).

We started the day lazy. Well, when can I have the Wan home on a weekday til late morning? We couldn’t quite go anywhere else cos we were having a huge birthday gift for Asfa. We went off to Yishun where the real party was at. 

A very excited Asfa and his mom putting on his party hat for him

Happy 3rd Birthday, Asfa!

The huge gift box we lugged from Toa Payoh

the Thomas track gift we shared with his parents

It was a blue party because it was supposedly Thomas-themed. Last year, we had his birthday in purple. We all wanted to get him Thomas this year, and we were afraid we might get the same thing for him. Thus, we decided to buy a huge track for him and share the cost instead. So now Asfa has a track for his almost complete set of Thomas and friends! I have a feeling that track is going to expand soon too. 

Asfa watching the water fountain

Us with Asfa

The following day, we met up with the boy again and his mom at Raffles City where Asfa loves to watch the water fountain at the basement. This was before we head up to Tampines Mall to get our anniversary gifts for each other. Other than the gifts in the previous post, we do get ourselves a new handphone each on our anniversary. The habit started last year. Looks like it sure is going to be a yearly practise now hehe!

the Wan's on the left, while mine's on the right

Click below only if you are my husband! Hahaha =P

Hubs, thank you for the 2 years. For supporting my every decision, for arguing my every point, for reminding me to take my medicine, for tell me off whenever I put myself down, for being my sunshine, each and every day. InsyaAllah, we’ll have many more years to have more handphones to collect! Hahaha

Love you tremendously much!

Publisher : BAC Company : BAC

Features

• Bachmann HO Thomas & Friends Emily with Moving Eyes – 58748
• BAC

Product Description

Build your Thomas and Friends collection one friend at a time. These separate items help the Island of Sodor run for Sir Topham Hat.

 June 23, 2007…11:43 pm Flaggman’s Canada

With a two-year-old in the house, it is virtually impossible to avoid purchasing products made in China. While I do my best to find clothes and toys from India, Taiwan, and the good old USA, some things are simply only made in China.

Case in point: all the “Thomas the Tank Engine” toys. Since his second birthday in April, my son’s only toy interest has been the wooden Thomas & Friends tracks and engines. They are terrific toys – durable, detailed, functional, creative, and virtually indestructible. They are also all made in China, at the private factory of RC2 Corp. of Oak Brook, IL.

Turns out RC2’s Chinese factory was cutting corners by using lead-based surface paint for some of the childrens’ trains. A massive recall was announced last week; seven of my son’s train cars and accessories may have been tainted with lead. (Kids never put these things in their mouths, do they?)

So, while hundreds of thousands of parents have to go through the trouble of sending their toys back to RC2 for replacements (please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery…), and have to worry about heavy metals polluting their kids’ central nervous systems, the Chinese factory bosses are spending their time…stonewalling the press! Check out this revealing piece from the normally wretched New York Times, “My Time as a Hostage, and I’m a Business Reporter” (David Barboza, June 24, 2007) :

SHANGHAI – AS an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

The author goes on to describe how the factory thugs tried to seize the Times reporter’s photographs, and how the local political and police operatives offered almost no help.

Barboza interprets the local officials’ fecklessness as a sign that the Communist government is unable to control the business barons. I have a different take. The Communist government is powerless not by necessity, but by choice. They want foreign journalists to be stonewalled on negative news. They want foreign journalists to be intimidated when they stumble upon the dark underbelly of the “miracle economy”. Above all, they want their industry protected from criticism. So when a factory thug holds foreign journalists hostage, the authorities are happy to let things run their course…for a little while, anyway. Long enough to make the point: keep it positive, or else.

Poisoned dog food…tainted toothpaste…dangerous toy trains. What’s next, industrial slavery? Ugh…truly sickening. Yet is this really surprising? Communism is as Communism does - amoral, bloodthirsty, inhuman, totalitarian, and utterly destructive.

Thanks to Little G, we end up spending a lot of time in Sodor—that is, the mythical island on which Thomas the Tank Engine and his train friends operate. All of the trains in Thomas’ world have unique personalities, whether it’s the narcissistic engine James or the perky young train Percy.  

That got us thinking—if Manhattan was Sodor, and vice versa, where would the Metro-North cast of characters fit in in Thomas’ little technicolor world? 

New Haven Line = Henry

Henry is a long train that “tends to be somewhat highly strung and prone to illness,” according to ThomasandFriends.com. The New Haven Line is highly strung as well–as in those arms extending to the electric catenary wires strung above the tracks. The most susceptible to foul weather of the three lines, New Haven is indeed prone to illness. Just ask any veteran rider of the line. 

The Harlem Line = Peter Sam

Peter Sam is “a happy and kind engine, but is a little vulnerable and often teased by the others.” Like Peter Sam, the Harlem Line suffers from a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome–not quite the doddering doofus that the New Haven Line is, not quite the beacon of efficiency that the Hudson Line is. 

MTA Board Member Mitchell Pally = Lady Hatt

Lady Hatt is Sir Topham Hatt’s wife and “a kind and gentile woman…who will also scold the engines when they act up or behave improperly.” Pally is the schoolmarm who wanted to do away with drinking on the trains.  

Slippery Rail Season = Lead Paint from China Used on Thomas Trains

Both lead paint and oily residue left on Metro North tracks force trains out of commission and leave their users gravely agitated.  

Finally, where, you ask, does our humble narrator, Thomas himself, fit into the equation? Thomas is described as a “cheeky, fussy little engine. He often gets into scrapes…but clouds never last long in Thomas’ world and he’s soon bustling about again.” 

Yes, that’d be you and me—the working stiffs shrugging off the floods and snowstorms and rude riders to turn up at our jobs in Sodor…er, Manhattan…each day.

Our favorite blue train will be hitting select theaters nationwide for one day only.  On Saturday, September 8, the first ever Thomas & Friends on the Big Screen will be screened in a special 10 a.m. showing.

Fathom Events is sponsoring this 60-minute cinema event featuring Thomas the Train.  The showing will include new episodes and three new characters.  Moviegoers will also be treated to sing-alongs and trivia.  At the end of the event attendees will receive a $5 Walmart gift card and a Thomas activity book.

Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased for $7 at fathomevents.com.

In Virginia, only two theaters — Kiln Creek Cinema Stadium 20 in Newport News and Strawbridge Marketplace Stadium 12 in Virginia Beach — will be airing this special event.  Guess it’s time for a trip to the Hampton Roads area.

As has been well-covered, China took a giant step in enhancing its business relationship with the U.S. by dousing Thomas & Friends toy trains with lead paint.

While we were playing with said trains (duh, the non-lead ones) with Little G, something struck us. The “character card” (think, baseball card for trains) for “Henry” made me wonder what Henry knew prior to the revelation that lead paint was used on the trains.

Reads the card: “[Henry's] vanity and temperament were made famous when the tunnel he refused to leave, for fear of ruining his coat of paint, was bricked over so that he could not get out.”

[Yes, we realize that's Thomas images in back to back days.]

Here’s the theory: Henry knew he’d been painted with lead paint, and took one for the team by refusing to leave the tunnel and subjecting himself to the curious mouths of small children all over the world. He sentenced himself to life in a brick tunnel to prevent children from brain damage.

Granted, it’s a longshot. But if it’s the case, well, Henry is a hero in our book.