Mostly Personal | Adventure in a Box

Should Boys Play with Dolls: a Dad’s Perspective

When I was a kid, my sister was always after me to play dolls with her. “Sure, I will just grab my BB gun,” I would say. She even bought me a Ken doll as a birthday gift one year, in an attempt to rope me in – at an age when news of it would have...

Best Handmade Toys from Adventure in a Box – 2014

These are a few things that happened to me for the first time in 2014: I was called “mama” by my son, tried fried ice-cream, grew ground cherries in my garden, learnt to use an angle grinder, broke my laptop’s screen by simply pushing my thumb into...

Hiking with Kids

When I was learning English, it took me a while to understand what “hiking” means. When I first heard the word, I thought it meant “camping”. Checking the English-Russian dictionary, I found a translation “walking”. Neither of those two describe hiking, which has...

Pippi Longstocking Dinner Decorations

Pippi Longstocking was my first book hero. Oh, how much I wanted those freckles, red braids and drawers full of small treasures! Not to forget the monkey and the horse. Once, after reading the book for the fiftieth times, I began to write a sequel to the story, but...

Books to Read Before Going to the Zoo

Few children do not like animals. Our Budster is no exclusion, and we have been encouraging his interest whole-heartedly with a variety of colourful books (from Mommy) and many captivating animal sounds (from Daddy). Once in a while, we would also take a trip to the...