Latest news with #toddler
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
When your poolside snack is interrupted by a surprise guest (and no one knows who's more startled)
In a now-viral TikTok with over 14.6 million views, mom @ellamcconkey the reality of traveling with young kids. It's the reminder every parent needs before their next trip—because no matter how well you plan, something hilarious (or chaotic) is always around the corner. The video starts off peaceful: a toddler, fresh from a swim, quietly enjoying her fries—until a lizard scurries into frame. Neither saw it coming. The video's caption reads, 'God forbid a girl tries to eat her french fries in peace on vaca,' and the text overlay drives it home: 'Lunch by the pool is fun until it's not.' The little girl's split-second reaction—an honest mix of confusion, fear, and restraint—has viewers both laughing and impressed: 'They were both scared ,' wrote @Laririri. 'The lizard: where's the ketchup,' joked @Amanda Franchi. And @amy bloom nailed the vibe: Because traveling with kids never goes exactly to plan Whether you're road-tripping with a baby or wrangling toddlers through TSA, every parent knows: the memories you make on vacation aren't always the ones you planned. Sometimes they show up in the form of a a diaper blowout just as the plane starts to a beloved stuffed animal accidentally left behind at the last hotel. The moments that stick often aren't on the itinerary. They're the tiny plot twists that turn into stories your family tells for years. Related: Toddler gives viral crumpet order—and mom's calm response wins the internet The tiny surprises that shape kids (and parents) Emotional resilience often begins in small, unexpected situations, like a sudden burst of fear met with reassurance or a surprise encounter at the lunch table. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), moments like these help children build the confidence and coping skills they'll rely on as they grow. How adults respond matters too. A calm presence, a quick laugh, or a reassuring hug can help kids feel safe enough to move through the moment. Even retelling the story later, when everyone is dry and eating fries again, can turn a brief disruption into a shared memory. Related: Toddler picks up mom's nickname for dad… and won't stop using it The memories you don't plan, but never forget You might forget the timeline, the meltdown in the rental car lot, or why you ever thought a museum was a good idea. But someone will remember the fries. Someone will remember the chaos. And someone will definitely remember the toddler who just wanted to eat in peace, and got a side of drama instead. Because when you're traveling with kids, the best stories tend to sneak up on you—messy, hilarious, and completely the wildest thing that's happened on a family trip? Tag @motherly on Instagram—we'd love to feature your story! Solve the daily Crossword
Telegraph
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Stop moaning, Nimbys – wind turbines have made Britain more beautiful
On a recent drive to Cornwall, my toddler in the back seat suddenly spoke up in excitement. But what was he trying to say? Win termites? Whip Turnips? 'Wind turbines!' Dozens of them had popped up alongside the A30 around Carland Cross. As each bladed white spire emerged like a Channel 4 ident, he called out in excitement. From the front seats we repeated the words, helping him to wrap his mouth around the sounds. It seems it would have been a different scene if Donald Trump was at the wheel. This week, the president of the United States condemned wind turbines as blighting the Scottish landscape and described them as a 'con job'. Speaking at his Turnberry Golf Course in South Ayrshire, he said: 'It's probably the best course in the world. And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills at the end of the 18th. I said: 'Isn't that a shame?'' Putting all paternal biases to one side, I am still going to side with a two year old over the leader of the free world on this matter. Visually intrusive Wind turbines became Britain's leading source of energy in 2024, contributing 30 per cent to the national grid. This is an energy source created on home soil, not reliant on shaky geopolitical shipping lanes. Granted, they are reliant on unpredictable weather patterns, but this doesn't seem to be the main reason they get so much grief. One argument I often hear is that wind turbines are visually intrusive man-made blots on our countryside. 'I'd rather look at an ancient oak or a willow, than a wind turbine,' my colleague just said to me. Our green space is shrinking. Should we not leave the precious acreage that remains untouched? OK, well here's an experiment. Think 'countryside' and what do you imagine? Hills, rivers and forests, sure, but also dry stone walls. Barns. Hedgerows. Country lanes. Hay bales. Cottages. Bridges. Church spires. Viaducts. Kissing gates. The British countryside is very much a man-made landscape. These modern windmills are an extension of our millennia-old history of commanding the land for our needs, just like how the animal kingdom builds nests, mounds and dams to suit its needs, too. Another colleague pointed out that the wind turbines off the coast of Norfolk have an unsightly red light at their tip, a requirement of the aviation industry to prevent collisions. These, he argued, mean that Norfolk's coastal residents can no longer look out to sea at night and enjoy the darkness of the sky. If you relocated to Norfolk decades ago for peace and dark skies, I appreciate this would be frustrating. But positive strides are being made. Radar-activated lights called 'Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems' (ADLS) are being introduced at new wind farms, notably in the Netherlands and parts of the US, meaning the red lights will only come on when a nearby aircraft is detected. Perhaps we will, one day, utilise similar technologies off Britain's shores, and our nighttime sea views will be (mostly) dark once again. A gust of wind Another counter argument is noise pollution. But context is needed here. The decibel count of a wind turbine is around 35 to 45 decibels from 300m away, which is broadly equivalent to the ambient decibel level of a typical countryside setting. (The dawn chorus can often rise above 70db, for comparison). The noise of a wind turbine is tiny compared to that created by a fossil fuel plant, which generates noise from multiple sources including cooling systems, machinery and fuel handling infrastructure. It's a different sort of sound, too. I like David Attenborough's description: 'It's beautiful, the noise is like a gust of wind, not machinery,' he said in 2011. One particularly worrying argument I've heard against wind farms is that they kill birds. Which is true. And bats. Nobody knows exactly how many birds die due to hitting wind turbine blades per year, but we have a broad idea. An LSE report in 2014 estimated that by 2020 it would be around 9,600 to 106,000 per year, in the UK. By comparison, house cats kill 55 million birds in the UK each year. So you should only sign that petition against your local wind farm on 'bird death' grounds if you're willing to sacrifice young Tibbles, too. Some people don't seem to like the fact that the energy-producing benefits of a wind farm are distributed nationally, rather than locally. I suspect this is the crux of many 'not in my back yard' arguments. Why here, and not somewhere else? Well, what they do create is local jobs. In a recent report, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) estimated that the offshore wind sector could support up to 100,000 jobs and onshore wind farms could support as many as 45,000. I wonder how many Nimbys' children will end up working in this industry in the future? I am not alone in my admiration for wind turbines. Off the coast of Brighton, tour guides are now selling boat trips around the 90 turbines that make up the Rampion Wind Farm. One tour guide, Paul Dyer, told the BBC that the outings are 'surprisingly popular,' particularly with residents. Fishing trips around the wind farms are also on the rise, as the sites can protect marine life and help to act as artificial reefs, away from trawlers. I can empathise with all of the counter arguments to wind farms and turbines. We are, and should be, fiercely protective of our countryside and shores. But when I drive along the A30, or see the Glyndebourne turbine near where I live, or sit on Brighton beach gazing out to Rampion offshore wind farm, I do not see something 'blighting the landscape' as Donald Trump does. I see a graceful, elegant monument to the future.
The Guardian
14 hours ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Becoming a paramedic changed me. But not in the ways I anticipated
Before I became a paramedic, I didn't expect the job would change how I load a dishwasher. Or eat a sandwich. Or look at trampolines. I knew it would change how I see others – watching people die tends to do that. But nearly 10 years in, I've realised how much it's quietly altered my day-to-day life. Being a paramedic makes you see danger everywhere, so you avoid risks because you're always expecting you'll need to spring into action, even when you're not in uniform. Once you've seen as many stretchers loaded with avoidable disasters as I have, you end up wired differently, and always brace for the next catastrophe. I can't walk into cafes, living rooms, or kids' birthday parties without conducting a risk assessment. I look for the nearest exits and sharp corners and often wonder if that defibrillator sitting on the wall covered in dust still works. At a party I once caught a toddler chewing on a deflated helium balloon. His parents were deep into their fourth round of Aperol spritzes, so I had to gently explain to them that a balloon can block an airway faster than you can sing 'Happy Birthday'. It's from experience more than from anxiety. A loose paver. Stray grapes. A poorly timed bomb into a pool. You stop seeing everyday life as nonthreatening once you've spent 45 minutes tearing apart someone's lounge room on your hands and knees looking for a button battery in the hope it's not halfway down a digestive tract. I will never again get on a motorbike, or on a trampoline. No judgment to the people who ride them. Or bounce on them. But I've been to too many scenes where someone came off second-best to physics. Motorbikes and trampolines both offer the illusion of freedom – right until the moment your femur is split into six parts. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning One of my first traumatic jobs involved a man who was clipped at an intersection. His helmet survived, but his spinal cord didn't. I've seen legs detached, ribcages shattered, and vital organs thrown three metres from where they belonged. Trampolines have morbid minds of their own. I once treated a child who launched clean off the mat and on to a garden stake. Now, every time I see someone weaving through traffic in shorts and thongs – or letting their kid somersault unsupervised on a back yard trampoline – I think: 'that's too much paperwork for my day off'. I guess you could call it pattern recognition. I don't touch recreational drugs – not that I would have anyway – because I've seen what happens when people assume their party cocaine isn't laced with fentanyl. The Pulp Fiction-style overdoses aren't fiction any more. And after watching the ketamine I've administered turn people into catatonic zombies, I've got no desire to try it myself (unless I take up trampolining and end up with a fractured femur). But just as I've learned to fear what others overlook, I've also stopped worrying about some of the things that send everyone else into a panic. I've lost count of the number of people who've called an ambulance because their smartwatch told them their heart rate was 'elevated' or 'irregular'. Some were convinced they were having a heart attack because the little waveform on the screen looks vaguely medical, as if a cheap wrist sensor compares to our $50,000 ECG machines. It's usually anxiety. Or coffee. We also get alerts triggered by watches mistaking burpees for car accidents, or older people dropping their watches on the tiles and the sensor thinking they've fallen. It's becoming the new version of rolling on to your VitalCALL pendant in your sleep. I'm not anti-technology. I think these devices have their uses. But increasingly, people are outsourcing common sense to apps. Algorithms don't do context. Maybe strapping-on and plugging in to these devices is our attempt to control life's inevitable chaos, as if a notification might keep death at bay. But I've seen too much in my time to believe that kind of insurance is possible. Death doesn't scare me any more. I've just learned to see it coming because I've seen it turn up in all the places you don't expect. Like during a jog. Or in a McDonald's toilet. Even halfway through mowing the lawn. I just assume the universe is indifferent. If anything, this has made me calm. Because I'm useful in a crisis, I'm more patient with people who panic over minor things. If someone cuts their hand on a poorly stacked knife in the dishwasher, I don't stress. I grab a tea towel and tell them if they apply some pressure, they'll live. You Went to Emergency For What? by Tim Booth, published by Pan Macmillan Australia, is out today ($36.99)
BBC News
15 hours ago
- BBC News
Mother admits manslaughter of daughter, 2, in Kingsley pond
A mother has pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her two-year-old daughter who was found in a Mackey was pronounced dead after being pulled from the water in Kingsley, Hampshire, in September Mackey, 42, of Oakhanger, admitted the offence during an appearance at Winchester Crown breaking news story is being updated. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Toddler bites cobra to death after venomous 3ft-long snake coiled itself around his hands in India
A two-year-old boy in India has stunned his community after he bit a three-feet-long cobra to death. Govinda Kumar fought back after the venomous snake coiled itself around hisD arm while he was playing outside. He was in the yard near his home in Bankatwa village, in the Majhaulia block of Bihar's West Champaran district, when the incident happened on Friday afternoon. According to relatives, the toddler had been playing near the house when he spotted the snake and threw a piece of brick at it. The cobra then lunged at him and wrapped itself tightly around his hand. In a shocking turn of events, the boy responded by sinking his teeth into the reptile's head, killing it. Govinda's grandmother, Mateshwari Devi, said: 'When we saw the snake in the child's hand, everyone rushed towards him, but in the meantime, he already bit the snake, killing it on the spot.' Shortly after the bite, the child lost consciousness. His family rushed him to a local health centre before he was transferred to the Government Medical College Hospital (GMCH) in Bettiah for specialist care. Doctors at GMCH confirmed that the cobra died from injuries to its head and mouth, believed to be caused by the child's bite. 'The venom did affect Govinda, but not fatally. Dr Surab Kumar, the medic in charge of treating the toddler, said: 'Timely treatment saved Govinda's life.' 'The child's condition is currently stable, and treatment is being administered under the supervision of doctors. 'The medical team is treating the child, providing continuous medication, and he is under observation.' The doctor also told The Telegraph: 'We were surprised and cross-checked with his parents multiple times to ensure the child was not bitten by the cobra to rule out that venom had not gone into his bloodstream.' Govinda was given an anti-allergy medication and is now under doctors' observation.
