Actually, I'm sure of it.



Nerf's Big Bad Bow is around $42 on Amazon.com.

In Lost Puppies, Peaceable Kingdom has delivered a move-pieces-around-the-paths game that will charm even the most jaded Candyland survivor, in part because there's a lot of complexity to when and how pieces are moved. This game was a massive hit with our daughter Zella, a wise old seven-year-old whose critical faculties melt to jelly at the mention of puppies, kittens, or anything else small and fuzzy and in need of hugs.

The goal of the game is to get a bunch of puppies home (they share the homes communally, and can travel to whichever one is convenient, as long as the one-puppy-per-household rule is respected). Puppies, as well as items to assist them (flashlights) and obstacles, numbered cards that must then be placed as barriers at set positions along the hub-and-spoke network of paths. Players take turns by turning over a card to discover whether it is a puppy, a mulligan, or a blockade, or moving a puppy along a path. Play is cooperative and it is quite possible to lose, although there are many ways to explain otherwise when your child is crying because you failed to get the puppies home and now they are wandering around lost in the park instead of in their nice warm beds.

You can pick up Lost Puppies on Amazon.com for about $13.

Win It! We're giving away a copy of Lost Puppies to one ZRecs reader. To enter to win, comment on this post and tell us about your favorite pet. This giveaway will end at 11:59 CT on Tuesday, December 13, we'll select a winner at random from eligible entries on December 14, and try to get the game to you by the holidays, although that's pushing it, isn't it?

The fine print: Giveaway open to U.S. residents 18 or older. One entry per person.

Disclosure: Peaceable Kingdom sent us this game to review. We will pass it on to someone else who can use it, or Z will pay us $13, which we will donate to charity. She doesn't choose to keep many review items, but this one could go either way. WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE PUPPIES?!

HABA's Hit the Throttle is among our favorite new games of the season. It's the first "head game" we've seen that is comprehensible to kids as young as four and delicious fun for them as they work on their "poker faces" and attempt to strategize their way to the finish line. As with all kids' games that are fun for adults, there's a wide range of strategies older kids and adults can employ, and best of all, our most complex machinations still can't guarantee victory. The balance of luck and skill here is pitch-perfect for a family game.

The concept is, well, not so simple: A series of cards form a track and colored wooden cars (heirloom quality as always with HABA) move along the track based on die rolls. But things get interesting in a few ways.

First, no player represents a single car. Every player draws a heavy stock card at the beginning of the game, on which are featured two cars of different colors. The player wins if their two cars reach the finish line before the two cars on any other players' cards do. In other words, if I hold a card with a blue and red car, I don't win if blue gets to the finish line first, and if purple comes in second, it only matters if someone else had a card with the blue-purple combo.

Second, players do not reveal the cars on their card. The winning combination for each player is their little secret.

Third, cars are moved through a series of die rolls strategically played each turn. The player begins by rolling three dice, each of which has the same six colored faces representing the cars' six different colors. The player chooses one of these colors and moves that colored car forward one space on the track. He or she then rolls the remaining two dice, picks a color and moves that car, and then rolls the last die and moves that colored car a space.

A few points of strategy make this game pretty interesting for kids learning to be sneaky:

• A car that has reached the finish line can still be selected as the color of choice on a die roll. That means if none of the cars are your two colors, you can "skip" a move by selecting the color of a car that has already finished the race.


• It is very valuable for other players to not know which cars you're rooting for, and if they do know, they are likely to brag about it. Selecting another colored car to move instead of one of your own can throw them off for a good portion of the game.

Meanwhile, players carefully watch each others' moves and try to figure out what colors others need to win. It's always a bit tricky because you have to move a car on almost every roll, which means you are often moving cars that aren't on your card.

Long story short, we love this game! You can pick it up on maukilo.com or at Amazon.com for about $11. A great stocking stuffer or gift in its own right!

Win it! We're giving away a copy of Hit the Throttle to one ZRecs reader. Email us at zrecsmedia@gmail.com with your favorite holiday game to play with the kids and you'll be entered to win! You have until 11:59 CT on Monday, December 12 to enter. We'll contact a winner in Dec. 13 and get you the game in time for the holidays!

The fine print: Must be 18 or older to win and a resident of the U.S. One entry per person. Must tell us about a real game that you actually like, because we might play it, and if it is terrible we will be sad.

Disclosure: HABA is participating in an event for which ZRecs will receive compensation. We'll be talking about this event on ZRecs soon, but be aware that as always, our views here are our own and are independent of any relationship we may have with the company.

The Children's Television Workshop has a bona fide mystery on their hands, and they've reached out to the hivemind at reddit for help.

Sesame Street's debuted 42 years ago today. But like most other TV shows, we had a test pilot. We created it in the summer of 1969, just a few months before the first episode aired. The actor who played Gordon on the show... was replaced by an actor named Matt Robinson (who, by the way, is Holly Robinson Peete's father).

Two years ago, we put together a huge anthology of our then-40 year history... and realized that we do not know who played Gordon in the test pilot. We've asked everyone we could think of -- actors, actresses, and puppeteers who have been on the show since its inception; Sesame Workshop's founder, Joan Ganz Cooney; and of course, dug through seemingly endless boxes of documents and photos.

Any clue would be great, even if it's seemingly esoteric or mundane. You can email it to us at wheresgordon@ sesameworkshop.org, drop me a message here, or if it doesn't involve someone's personal info, leave it in a comment.
Oh, and one other thing: Here's a clip of our mystery Gordon from that test pilot. And yes, Bert and Ernie look a little different than they do nowadays, but then again, Oscar used to be orange.

The clip:



Sorry, "Time Traveling Tracey Jordan" has already been suggested.

As freeform homeschoolers, we are always walking the line between freedom and structure. We believe that all children benefit from freedom in their education, but that some structure can help guide a child and keep them centered. Since Z is 7, we've also been working a lot with calendars, clocks, and the idea of routines.

After some ups and downs struggling with getting Z to engage in "activities" (our code word for schooling), I happened on a solution that has worked better than I could ever have imagined: A daily calendar describing events of the day, including appointments that are outside of Z's control (my own appointments or commitments as well as her routine commitments to classes she has chosen, like ballet and gymnastics) and some portion of learning activities that she has pre-chosen in a weekly meeting as her goals and intentions for the week. I set up the schedule in the evening, filling in clock faces to show her what times events are scheduled to begin and end (she's learning to tell time) and writing descriptions of what we'll do, including morning routine reminders that help me get her ready to start the day by a set time, and take care of things we need to do around the house (pick up, feed the chickens, put away the dishes) and all the fun stuff we plan to do throughout the day. The schedule almost always includes free play periods where nothing is scheduled at all -- often an hour or two in the afternoons, as we do our best schooling in the morning.

The thing about the schedule is, while I write up this daily schedule (using activities she has outlined for the week), she is the one who holds me to it. It's only now that we have a schedule that I realize just how often, and how persistently, she was asking what was coming next, trying to fix the order of a day's errands or appointments her mind, and when she would get to do X, on an almost-daily basis -- and how frustrated she would get when an activity was interrupted by something else I had in mind for us to get on to. The schedule has given us both the structure we need, while remaining highly flexible, since its contents are negotiated in advance. Z is now eager to move through the events of each day, and the first thing she does every morning, without fail, is look over the schedule to see what's happening. (The "weather" and "moon phase" blanks at the top of the page are for her to fill in.)

If you'd like a copy of this schedule to use yourself, you can grab a PDF of our Daily Kids' Calendar here.

It's been a rough year around ZRecs HQ. If you follow me on Twitter or have "liked" us on Facebook you already know the whys, but I'm finally ready to go into a little more detail here on our blog.

One year ago today, I lost one of my best friends to postpartum depression. A sweet baby girl lost her mama, a husband lost his wife, parents lost their daughter, and the world lost a compassionate, generous activist.

I met Kristi Marie Couvillon Wise during college sometime in the mid-nineties. I don't remember where or the exact date, and when I look back on it, it seems like I'd just known her forever. There are few people with whom I've had that instant connection -- that moment that changes so quickly and seamlessly from the just-getting-to-know-you phase to knowing that you will grow old and still be laughing and sharing with this person.

The thing I hadn't yet put my finger on in those early days - I suspect that I recognized it but couldn't name it -- was that beyond all of the music and philosophies and books and other random interests that we shared, we also shared a struggle with chronic depression.

I don't remember how or why we first spoke of it. Did she mention it or did I bring it up? Was it in the context of a current episode, or were we sharing our pasts? But I saw that for the first time, there was a person who didn't judge, didn't scorn, wasn't shocked when I described what it felt like to be sinking into that black abyss of depression. She didn't tell me to keep a stiff upper lip or to think of other things; she acknowledged and she shared her own struggles and experiences with me. Our battle with depression was only part of our relationship, although it was an important part. But I also loved Kristi for her boundless spontaneity, her free spirit, her compassion, sincerity, and intelligence. Kristi was one of the most giving people that I've ever met.

As we grew to adulthood, we continued to share our struggles. She helped me through a battle against PTSD and postpartum depression after the birth of my daughter Z. I consoled her when she had a miscarriage and through years of infertility. We celebrated together at weddings, she came to my daughter's birthday parties, we each moved across the country and back at different times, we started and sometimes changed careers. There were times, of course, when our contact would slow (can you remember a time when texting didn't exist and when internet access was not available everywhere you went?) but for the big things -- the sorrows, the losses, the wins -- we made sure to talk or visit.

Kristi blossomed in her adulthood, first as a social worker, then as a defense attorney, and then as a working mother. The passion and love she shared with her friends and family came through in her law career and work with the Texas Civil Rights Project, where she labored tirelessly for inmates on Texas' death row.

A year ago today, Kristi died after nearly five months of torturous depression. She was seeking treatment and had a strong support system, but depression is not always cured by popping a Prozac. It's often a long experiment to see which drugs have an effect on your body while trying to be convinced that the thoughts coming from your mind are not your own. She left a six-month-old daughter, a loving husband, and countless others to mourn her.

I cannot imagine the rest of my life without Kristi. My heart breaks for her daughter who will never know the light that shone so bright from her mother, but also to think of the sadness and pain from which she so desperately needed relief. I still mourn her every day. I wonder what I could have done, what any of us could have done to help her. I think about all of the other people in the world who have lost loved ones to suicide -- all of the other children who must grow up without a mother or a father, all of the parents who lost their children too early.

I think of my own struggles with depression, my own spirals into the abyss. I think of how we toss around the words "depression" or "depressed" like a baseball. "I'm so depressed that it's raining today" or "That movie was really depressing." Do we cheapen the meaning of the word and lighten our impressions of true depression? Does using the word depression in those ways make us underestimate its deadly power? Certainly it makes it easier to brush off when someone says tells you they are depressed -- do you have to take it seriously like when someone says they have cancer? Or have we so watered down the word that it's more like telling someone you stubbed your toe? ("Oh, I'm sorry, that must hurt. Just keep on truckin' and you'll feel better in no time.")

A year has passed. In some ways, it feels like Kristi died only yesterday, but in others, I have moved forward. And so I find myself beginning to do again what we at ZRecs have prided ourselves on doing for years: advocating, raising awareness, and contributing my voice to the many that are trying to make things different somehow. I can't change what happened to Kristi (oh how I desperately wish I could) but maybe if we all work together we can change the next person. Maybe we can make postpartum depression be treated as a serious issue by our society and our media. Maybe we can help support new moms better and make sure that they are getting the help and the relief that they need while they are adjusting to becoming mothers. Maybe together we can ask all of our new mom friends, not just "How is the baby?but "How are you?" "Are you feeling sad?" "Do you know the signs of postpartum depression?" "What can I do to help you?"

When we see a loved one who seems to be struggling, we can reach out to them -- offer help, help them find help, tell them that depression is not a way of life -- is not something to brush off. We can make our children aware of the signs of depression and suicide -- help them become fluent in identifying those signs -- maybe help them save a friend. We can work together to stop the damned bullying already.

I've found somewhere to start that works for me: Raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I'm going to walk one of their Out of the Darkness walks, because I'm committed to making suicide an acceptable topic of conversation. I'm going to help them raise money for education and awareness. And slowly, as I put the pieces back together, I'll see what I can do to raise awareness for postpartum depression. Because no one should feel that desperate. No one should see suicide as their only way out. And because babies deserve mothers and mothers deserve help.

The Reverend David Hoster wrote a beautiful eulogy for Kristi's service and I'll leave you with his last words:

"Then our new responsibility will begin. The Kristi that we cherish is all about life, and it is the responsibility of those who know and cherish her to meet her death with life. Whatever she brought to life in each of us must be the living, triumphant answer to the question that is no longer a question, but a straightforward declaration of fact: how could she not be among us!"

If you'd like to donate to my Out of the Darkness walking team (all funds are donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), you can do so on my participant page. I'd be so thankful if you did.

If you or someone you know is in emotional crisis or is showing the warning signs for suicide, please seek help immediately or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).