A 20-year-old Kingman woman who gave birth to conjoined twins held them for the first time on Friday.

Ashley Frank says the twins were so tiny she was scared to touch them.

The twins were born Wednesday by Caesarean section. They’re joined at the abdomen and share a liver. Together, they weigh 8 pounds, 10 ounces.

Pediatric surgeon Dr. Stuart Lacey says the babies will need to be at least 3 months old before doctors begin to consider a surgical separation. They’ll need several surgeries before that.

Doctors with Phoenix Children’s Hospital say they don’t know the babies’ gender because of how they are fused.

Phoenix girl shows great strength in battling cancer

Ainsley Holbura works with physical therapist Sue Meland of Vibrant Care Rehabilitation Center in March. The 10-year-old underwent pioneering surgery in December to save her cancerous right leg.

Ainsley Holbura’s knee hurt, but that must have been from all the soccer she was playing.

When the pain didn’t go away, her parents took her to the doctor, which led to a stunning diagnosis: cancer.

“It’s hard to absorb that information at first, and then when you do, you panic,” Donna Holbura, 42, said. “You think you are going to lose your child.”

Ainsley, now 10, didn’t panic. From the beginning, she displayed maturity beyond her years.

“What really surprised me is how thankful I was for what I do have,” Ainsley said from her Phoenix home. “When I went to camp, I saw a lot of kids with the same thing I had, but they had amputations.”

What Ainsley had is osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that is diagnosed in approximately 400 children in the United States each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Shortly after her diagnosis, it was clear that Ainsley was going to lose her knee.

Her doctor, Matthew Seidel, orchestrated a rare case of cooperation between two medical-technology companies that allowed him to replace her cancer-riddled knee with a mechanical one that would “grow” as she did.

As remarkable as that procedure was, it was just the beginning.

Up next were months of chemotherapy that made her sick, and countless hours of rehabilitation that made her wince.

Then, she lost her hair.

Then, she got sores in her mouth from the chemotherapy that were so painful she could not eat or talk.

Through it all, Ainsley stayed positive.

Even on her worst days, she remained smart and funny. She worried about her family worrying about her.

“She was always an amazing child,” Donna said. “I think this accentuated her character, but it was there.”

Then there was a serious setback.

A spot was found on Ainsley’s lung. Her cancer had spread.

“You say, ‘Wow. How big is it? What does this mean?’ ” Donna said. “We knew we would just have to fight it harder.”

And so Ainsley did.

There were more surgeries, more chemotherapy and nausea, and more trips to the hospital.

“It was hard,” Ainsley said.

In May, Ainsley started to feel a little bit better. Eventually, she walked without limping.

This week, she started what may be her final chemotherapy treatment.

Still, it is too early to say she is in the clear.

There will be monthly scans for years to see if the cancer returns.

Ainsley and her family will need to be ready to fight again.

But for now, she can be what she has wanted for months.

“I’m really looking forward to not being treated so special,” she said.

This week, Ainsley went back to school as a fifth-grader at Cherokee Elementary School.

She was excited to see her friends and teachers. She was even looking forward to homework.

“I want to be a normal person again,” she said.

In planning birthday parties for their children, parents are facing stumbling blocks that include trademark infringement.

For children’s parties, many companies around the country provide costumed characters popular with kids — characters like Dora the Explorer, Bob the Builder and Hannah Montana. In recent years, corporations that own the rights to some of the more popular characters, companies that include Marvel Entertainment Inc., Scholastic Inc., and HIT Entertainment, have sent cease-and-desist letters, threatened lawsuits and in some cases received settlements from companies that market unauthorized character impersonators.

The threats rattle the costume industry. Some companies hire lawyers to advise them on how to stay out of trouble and remain in business. Others are now commissioning costumes that only slightly resemble characters owned by media companies. They have names like “Big Red Tickle Monster,” instead of Elmo, and “Explorer Girl with Backpack,” rather than Dora.

Leslie Ann Hooker, a Fort Lauderdale costume-company owner, thought she had found a way to run her business without running into trouble. “I try to make my costumes look 40 percent different,” she said early this month, adding that she didn’t explicitly offer trademarked characters: “I don’t have SpongeBob. I have SquishyGuy.”

This week she changed her mind. She dissolved her company, reincorporated under the name Clean, Green and Crazy Cartoons, Inc. and now will only market her self-created band of environmentally conscious super heroes. “I made the change out of fear of lawsuits,” she said Monday.

The relationship between birthday parties and intellectual property has become more fraught as children’s television has gone beyond “Sesame Street” and become a multi-billion-dollar business. In his new book, “Anytime Playdate: Inside the Preschool Entertainment Boom,” Dade Hayes counts more than 50 TV shows aimed at the 2- to 5-year-old audience, up from fewer than 10 in 1990.

Generic clowns no longer do the trick. Kids want to see at their parties the characters they know and love from TV and movies. But to sustain live-entertainment and theme-park revenues, most companies that own rights won’t offer licensed, authentic costumes that can be worn by professional birthday-party entertainers. That has left parents out of luck.

Miriam Sorkin, an office manager in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., threw a fourth-birthday party for her daughter in May and arranged for a costumed impersonator of Dora the Explorer. Though the walk-about “Dora” had the expected pageboy haircut and backpack, her expression was blank and her legs appeared out of proportion to the rest of her body. “When Dora came out,” Mrs. Sorkin says, “none of the kids would go to Dora, including my daughter, and a few of the kids started crying.”

Elvira Grau, who owns Space Odyssey USA, where Mrs. Sorkin held her daughter’s party, says the costume companies that service her parties try to make their costumes look sufficiently different from the trademarked characters to avoid lawsuits. When Mrs. Sorkin complained to her that Dora was “hideous,” Mrs. Grau gave her a $250 credit. “But I told her, ‘You can’t have the real Dora. If you want the real Dora, call Nickelodeon.”‘

For her son’s third birthday last year, Faith McVeigh wanted to give a Thomas the Tank Engine birthday party. She called a half-dozen costume providers but none would give her what she wanted. “I told them, ‘I don’t want a blue train and a conductor. It has to be Thomas,” she says. A resident of Milton, Wash., Ms. McVeigh co-owns a franchised Yamaha dealership and respects the right of companies to protect their assets. Still, she is irked by the birthday-party crackdown. “They cram this down our throat on Graham cracker boxes and macaroni and cheese. They’ve so oversaturated the market in every way and all we’re asking for is the ability to give a birthday party for our children,” Ms. McVeigh says.

Costume providers say they are increasingly hamstrung. Kim Kalin, the owner in Atlanta of Copy Cats for Kids, a party-service provider, has a special folder marked “lawsuits” for the nine or so cease-and-desist letters she has received in the past eight years. She has settled one suit with lawyers representing Barney, the purple dinosaur. “The whole mess ended up costing me $30,000 — I spent $20,000 alone for the lawyer,” Ms. Kalin says. In June, an attorney for Marvel Entertainment sent her a letter claiming knowledge of “unauthorized costumed Spider-Man, Hulk and Wolverine appearance services,” and added, “Marvel has no choice but to seek legal recourse against your business.”

Ms. Kalin says she’s now turning away customers who insist on Marvel characters, and has hadrette dangling from her mouth. Attorneys note that if they do not actively police their trademarks in one realm, a court might later rule that they have forfeited their rights to enforce it in others.

A trademark claim can be made when someone is marketing a product that is “likely to cause confusion among consumers about the source of the product,” according to James D. Weinberger, an intellectual-property attorney whose firm represents clients like DC Comics and the Jim Henson Co. The media companies contacted for this story declined to quantify the number of cease-and-desist letters sent or lawsuits filed. But Mr. Weinberger says, “This sort of thing is definitely on the radar in the industry.”

John Turitzin, executive vice president and general counsel for Marvel says a company that is built on intellectual property must police the use of its assets. “We don’t want to interfere with or ruin the fun of birthday parties,” he says. “But we do search the Internet all the time for commercial use of our characters.”

Authentic, licensed costumes in adult sizes that would be legal to rent for birthday-party entertainment are hard to come by. Marvel contracts with a company that now offers sanctioned entertainers dressed as Spider-Man and Iron Man. But the cost of an appearance starts at $1,600. Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, says that while the company doesn’t offer walk-about characters for birthday parties, it does send such characters on national tours and sells tickets to see them. And this past spring it opened Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. Scholastic, which owns characters like Clifford the Big Red Dog, offers rentals for literacy-related events. Scholastic’s Web site lists rules for those wearing the big red dog costume including “Clifford should never take his costume head off in view of children” and “Clifford should NOT do anything objectionable like lift his leg or push a kid.”

HIT Entertainment, which has a portfolio including characters like Barney, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, says the company tries to actively police the world of birthday parties by regularly monitoring birthday-party planning Web sites and parenting blogs. Jamie Cygielman who oversees the company’s U.S. consumer-products division says that kids who want to see characters live can visit “Thomas Town” attractions at Six Flags facilities, including in Atlanta and Springfield, Mass. Ms. Cygielman adds that though parents can’t hire Thomas to come to their homes, they can still host Thomas-theme birthday parties by buying paper plates and decorations at Hallmark, which is the authorized provider of paper products featuring HIT’s characters.

Disabled, foster children to be booted from private schools

PHOENIX – Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard on Wednesday shot down a proposal for the Arizona House to use $5 million of its surplus money to pay for vouchers for hundreds of private school students.

Goddard said the proposal by House Speaker Jim Weiers and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne involving interim funding with House money would be unconstitutional without an appropriation approved by the full Legislature and the governor.

Weiers and Horne made the proposal because there is no money in the new budget for the vouchers for hundreds of disabled and foster children.

“It’s a terrible situation and I feel very badly for the families,” Goddard said in a telephone interview. “Try as we might, we could not find any method that the speaker could take funds appropriated for the House and use them for scholarships.”

Weiers said he was disappointed by Goddard’s informal opinion and was trying to contact Horne, who is on vacation. “The important thing is that we don’t stop trying,” Weiers said.

In requesting the informal opinion, the two Republican officeholders said they were trying to arrange temporary funding for the voucher programs to avoid harming the students if they have to change schools.

They offered their proposal after the Arizona Supreme Court said the vouchers could continue during an appeal of an Arizona Court of Appeals decision. That ruling found that the vouchers violated state constitutional prohibitions against using state money to support religious or other private schools.

That decision overturned a trial court judge decision that upheld the two programs created under 2007 legislation.

But the new state budget approved last month didn’t include continued funding for the vouchers.

That was partly because the state needed to make cuts to help erase a projected $2 billion shortfall and partly because the voucher program was new, wasn’t using all of its allotted funding and “wasn’t really fulfilling a central role of public education,” Gov. Janet Napolitano said.

The budget was supported by Napolitano, legislative Democrats and a small number of majority Republican lawmakers.

The Department of Education said 189 foster students received grants for the 2007-2008 school year, with an average grant amount of $3,945. Meanwhile, 186 grants were issued to disabled students, in amounts ranging from $975 to nearly $24,100.

Tucson resident Brendan Fay, whose 14-year-old disabled daughter received a voucher during the past school year, said the law apparently tied Goddard’s hands on the interim funding proposal. But he said that Napolitano’s opposition to vouchers led to the elimination of the program’s funding.

“It’s a huge disservice to the children,” Fay said, referring to the general situation and citing progress his daughter made while in a private school.

Supporters are trying to raise private donations to pay for the vouchers and will urge lawmakers to appropriate funding in 2009, Fay said.

Napolitano, a Democrat, generally opposes vouchers – full or partial tuition grants that are provided to families of students attending private schools – but accepted the creation of the programs as part of a 2007 budget compromise that gave her wins on other issues.

Asked about the Weiers-Horne funding proposal before Goddard released his informal opinion, Napolitano expressed qualms about using money appropriated for the Legislature “to fund a program that was not specifically not funded in this budget.”

Amanda Walker (from left), Emily McQueen and Jordan Stephenson peel carrots and prepare the organic vegetables at the Prescott College cooking camp in Prescott Thursday, June 19.

PRESCOTT – The students listened attentively as chef Pam O’Donald described cabbage.

“There are more than one kind of cabbage – this is head cabbage,” she said.

“This is Napa cabbage, which looks much different here than it does in the store. This is organic and it has a lot of dark-green color.”

“It looks like a head,” some in the class remarked.

“It looks like a bad hair day,” one boy observed.

It’s just another session at the Crossroads Cafe cooking camp at Prescott College, where future chefs and cooking connoisseurs were looking forward to sampling five kinds of gluten-free pasta.

Nutrition instructor Victoria Abel was on hand to help in the kitchen as part of her second master’s degree internship.

“The kids have already studied the different colors of food and the good points of red, green, white and orange selections,” Abel said.

“Victoria has been able to expose a lot of new ideas to such a diverse group of students,” O’Donald said. “The whole class revolves around smelling, tasting and feeling food. It is amazing when you hear 7- to 10-year-olds comparing conventional grown foods with organic. They have such interesting descriptions – it is mind-boggling to me.”

One comment about a conventional tomato read, “Bland. It tastes like wormy water.”

Another, after someone took a bite of an organic peach, read simply, “Heaven.”

From 9:30 a.m. until 1 p.m., the class broke into four groups, each with its own recipe to follow. Members collected ingredients from a cart and prepared the dish.

“We sit down as a family and share the meal together and then clean up our mess,” O’Donald said.

This day’s menu featured spring rolls and cold soy chicken salad. Sometimes recipes do not turn out as they expect.

“Any disasters we may have can turn into something real creative,” O’Donald said. “We teach that there is not usually a failure in the kitchen.”

Watching a 7-year-old have full command of a butcher knife is a “hold your breath” experience.

“I love it – it is very cool,” said Katie Poole, 7, of Prescott. “And I love to cook desserts, lunch and this milkshake.”

“This is very fun. I want to come back every year,” said Sierra Cottle, 10, from Prescott.

Ethan Robinson, 8, from Chino Valley, was quite philosophical about the experience.

“I ate the carrots so quick that I forgot to taste them,” he said. “The carrot had three legs and the squash had Siamese twins – they were attached together. We are making white food for lunch.”

The current six-week session relates to the book, “Cooking with Fanny at Chez Panisse,” by Alice Waters. It explores the world of the freshest ingredients through a child’s eyes. Other themes include five countries in five days and party foods.

Janice M. Nash, a certified baby signs instructor, conducts story time for youngsters at Hastings Books Music & Videos in Sierra Vista. Parents had a chance to learn baby sign language during the event.

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. – At 5 months old, Roan Nash gave her first sign: milk.

Now 17 months old, Roan can sign 120 signs and say 65 words.

To be able to get into her daughter’s mind from such a young age has been a thrill for Roan’s mother, Janice Nash.

“The biggest benefit to me with her is the bond that it’s created,” Nash said.

Because of the results Nash and her husband have seen, Nash wanted to share the Baby Signs program with the rest of Sierra Vista.

On Tuesday morning, Nash presented a story time to a packed audience at Hastings Entertainment that incorporated Baby Signs, for which Nash is a certified instructor.

“I just want the community to know that this is out there for them,” she said.

The story time, which featured Beebo, the Baby Signs bear, focused on animals. Throughout the half-hour presentation, kids and their parents learned to sign words such as cow, horse and sheep.

“Some of the benefits of the Baby Signs program are emotional development, intellectual development,” Nash told the parents as they started the story time.

Jacklyn Armstrong, who attended the event with her 8-week-old son Lorenzo, said she remembered the benefits of learning signs as a young child at day care in Germany and wanted to provide her son with the same opportunities.

“I was able to read by the time I was 4,” Armstrong said, adding she wants to lessen the frustrations that Lorenzo may have in trying to communicate.

“I would like to be able to understand some of the things he says,” Armstrong said.

As Nash read books, such as “Five Little Ducklings,” the kids mimicked her signs for mom, duck and other words. Beebo would come out to sing songs with the kids, many of the kids smiling as he interacted with them.

“He is a motivational tool,” Nash said. “They draw to him.”

Plus, Nash said, her yellow glove-clad hands stand out to the kids, helping them pick up on the signs.

Nash said it’s easy to teach kids signs, though with very young children it may not show until about 5 months. It just a matter of repetition. And not to worry, it doesn’t diminish their desire to speak.

“Signing is to talking like crawling is to walking,” Nash said. “You’re building the foundation to speak.”

Nash said watching kids pick up the sign language, and what they can then share, will be an amazing experience for parents.

“The memories that they can share at a young age is remarkable,” Nash said, explaining her daughter will often come home and tell her what she did with her dad that day. “It also teaches parents to respect their children because you learn how smart they really are.”

Nash said the story time was an introduction to what the Baby Signs program includes, and she plans to start offering lessons in town.

“I’m very thankful to bring this to the community,” Nash said.

PHOENIX — Arizona’s child protection system and the people who work in it will be subject to more public and legislative oversight because under new laws signed Tuesday.

Four bills signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano were promoted by supporters as increasing accountability and transparency of state functions to protect children from abuse and neglect.

The bills would increase public access to Child Protective Services information after the death or serious injury of a child.

Others provisions would open some CPS-related court proceedings and allow inspection of state employee disciplinary records.

Lawmakers proposed the legislation in the wake of deaths of three Tucson-area children who were killed, allegedly at the hands of parents, after the families came into contact with CPS.

Child Protective Services has classified about 400 cases statewide as “unable to locate” the children in 2007, a Department of Economic Security official said.

Though CPS couldn’t track them down, none was listed as missing in state or national databases, said Ken Deibert, deputy director of DES’s division of children, youth and family, which oversees CPS. He said the law does not give CPS the authority to enter kids into those registers.

Rep. Jonathan Paton, R-Tucson said CPS needs more scrutiny. He added that cooperation between the agency and law enforcement is in drastic need of improvement.

At least five Tucson children with open CPS cases died under suspicious circumstances in the past year. In the case of 5-year-old Brandon Williams, deputies had contact with the child but didn’t call CPS because they didn’t know the agency was looking for him, Paton said.

That case prompted legislators to look into the relationship between CPS and law enforcement, but Deibert said the Williams case is not representative of most “unable to locate” cases, which account for just more than 1 percent of the 37,000 calls the agency gets each year.

Deibert said 400 “unable to locate” cases a year was average, although the number of those cases varies with the quality of information the agency receives. About 60 percent of the “unable to locate” files are based on reports to the agency’s tip line that didn’t include enough information for social workers to investigate, he said.

Another 15 percent to 20 percent involve families that have moved, often out of state, he said. In the remaining 20 percent of cases, the child and parent weren’t found.

“In those cases, if the allegations are serious, we can notify law enforcement,” Deibert said. “They then do a check-welfare call.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department and Tucson Police Department reported a good working relationship with CPS.

Lt. Kathy Rau, who oversees TPD’s child sex crime investigations, said CPS can file a missing persons report if it suspects a child is in serious danger.

Paton seeks to seal cracks in procedure by further formalizing the agencies’ relationship. A package of CPS reform bills put forward by Paton and Rep. Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, is intended to increase CPS oversight, and one, HB2599, spells out the procedure for listing a child as missing.

The bill, as it was worded Friday, said CPS should ask the Department of Public Safety to enter the child’s information into a database if the child is missing and in danger of serious harm.

Nogales, Son., and the state of Sonora are hosting a Winterfest celebration Saturday to encourage Christmas shopping in the city.

The event, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., will begin at Calle Obregon and center on three blocks just across from the U.S.-Mexico border crossing. Those streets will be closed to vehicular traffic.

Anyone from north of the border is welcome to the event, said said Tucsonan Bob Feinman, a member of the Nogales, Son., Chamber of Commerce.

Food, drinks and mariachis will be provided. American currency is preferred by Nogales merchants. Day visitors need a picture ID to re-enter the United States. No passport is required.

State lawmakers will hold a public hearing in Phoenix on Tuesday on two Child Protective Services cases involving the deaths of three Tucson children.

Rep. Jonathan Paton, a Tucson Republican who called for the hearing, said a central question for CPS administrators will be “whether CPS adequately follows up on cases or closes them too early, without adequate monitoring of children’s well-being.”

In an interview, Paton said the hearing is aimed at more accountability from CPS.

He said he will introduce several pieces of legislation to increase “transparency” in the operation of the state’s child welfare system.

Nearly all child welfare records are sealed from the public by state statute.

The hearing, led by the House Government Committee, was to be closed to the public.

But a Phoenix judge recently allowed the release of hundreds of pages of CPS records after two newspapers went to court to get them unsealed. So the committee hearing was opened to the public. The 9 a.m. hearing will be in the state Capitol.

Five-year-old Brandon Williams died in March. Police have charged his mother, Diane Marsh, and another woman, Flower Tompson, who lived with Marsh, with first-degree murder.

The hearing will also address the deaths of Ariana Payne, 4, and Tyler Payne, 5. Ariana’s body was found in February. The Pima County medical examiner said he suspects she died sometime in 2006. Tyler is presumed dead.

Their father, Christopher Payne, and his girlfriend, Reina Gonzales, are charged with murder in their deaths. The state said it will seek the death penalty for both.

CPS workers had contact with Payne and Marsh for varying reasons in the year before the children died or disappeared.

“You’re not going to get systems change in one hearing,” said Rep. Peter Hershberger, a Republican from Tucson and chairman of the House Human Services Committee.

He is also co-founder and co-chair of the Legislature’s bicameral, bipartisan Children’s Caucus, which promotes children’s issues and funding for children’s programs.

“Evaluating what we do is appropriate but this doesn’t have clarity of mission,” he said of the upcoming hearing on CPS.

Hershberger said he favors changes in CPS funding. This funding is “very important and not enough,” he said.

The Department of Economic Security has made “major policy revisions” in the rule book used by Child Protective Services.

The changes are aimed at improving child safety.

The policy revisions were sent by e-mail this week to CPS workers by DES Deputy Director Ken Deibert, who oversees CPS. They took effect Sept. 19.

CPS now requires workers to collect and review certain criminal history records when investigating a case.

The revisions require CPS workers to do more to locate a family and children in order to assess the risk of future harm to a child.

They must contact other jurisdictions, other states, the military and tribal authorities to investigate allegations of abuse or neglect.

The revised rules also require a CPS worker to get copies of court orders “restricting or denying custody, visitation or contact by a parent or other person in the home with the child.”

They require that CPS “not facilitate or concur with placement or contact with the child in any way that conflicts with the order.”

And if the status of a custody order cannot be determined, the CPS worker now must contact the state Attorney General’s Office.

These changes appear to address how CPS workers handled the case of Jamie Hallam and Christopher Payne case.

Payne, Hallam’s ex-husband, has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of their children, Ariana Payne, 4, and Tyler Payne, 5.

A CPS supervisor told police to leave the children with their father even after Hallam showed the officer custody papers indicating she had sole legal custody of them and he had no visitation rights.

CPS spokeswoman Liz Barker Alvarez said the policy revisions are made periodically by DES administrators.

She said they are based on internal review of legislative requirements, to clarify existing policy and to integrate different types of CPS risk assessments.

The revisions also clarify that CPS workers must discuss and promote infant-safe sleeping with parents of children 1 year old and younger.

Tucson police said the death of a 3-week-old boy on Sept. 13 appeared to be caused by “co-sleeping.” The baby was in bed with his mother. The death is being investigated by police.

Gov. Janet Napolitano says she was left “speechless” by new Bush administration rules for a popular children’s health insurance program used by Arizona and other states.

The administration says states can’t loosen eligibility standards unless they restrict enrollment of children who already have insurance and sign up at least 95 percent of children already eligible.

Napolitano says that has the effect of providing coverage for fewer children, not more, and that’s contrary to what the public wants.

The administration says the changes are needed because states are expanding their programs to the point that families drop their private coverage.

The rules could stand in the way of another attempt by Napolitano to loosen Arizona’s eligibility standards.

MESA – There’s never a shortage of things to play with at the McFarlane home.
Ominous-looking dragons reside in 7-year-old Jake McFarlane’s Ahwatukee Foothills bedroom. Characters from the movie “Shrek” and the TV show “Lost” line the bedroom shelves of sisters Cyan, 15, and Kate, 12.
They even have access to a special toy showroom.
Being the offspring of a toy designer has its advantages.
Dad is Todd McFarlane, an artist, writer and toy designer/manufacturer who’s best known for creating the “Spawn” comic book/movie/toy franchise in the early 1990s.
While they say it’s cool that their father creates comic book characters and action figures, to the McFarlane children Todd McFarlane is just Dad.
“We used to play with Barbies a little (as kids). We’d put our dad’s toys on our shelves,” says Cyan.
“If we asked for something similar (a toy) to something he had done, he would try to convince us to play with his,” says Kate, on the way her dad used to joke around with her on her toy choices. “He would say look, mine has better detail.”
“They would say, ‘It’s nice, Dad. It’s cool.’ They were young. They didn’t get into the Alien and Predator detail,” says McFarlane, sitting with his children at his Tempe office, describing his daughters’ early reactions to the fantasy-inspired toys he creates.
The McFarlane brood admit they have a unique vantage point: They get a behind-the-scenes look at how toys are made.
And not many children can say they’ve had an action figure named after them (one of the “Spawn” characters was named after Cyan).
As parents, McFarlane and his wife, Wanda, have always been careful to show their children video footage that’s age-appropriate.
That goes for any McFarlane toys that have dark or racy themes.
“Kate did a voice of a character (the young Cyan character on the animated version of “Spawn”) on HBO. She still hasn’t seen it,” says McFarlane of the R-rated cable TV episodes he says his children can see one day when they are older. “It’s a parent’s responsibility.”
He says the toys are an extension of the comics, movies and shows, created with collectors in mind.
There have been exceptions.
The hauntingly realistic “Lost” figurines were inspired by Cyan’s love of the popular ABC show.
“Cyan was a fan of the show before I was,” says McFarlane, who began watching the program with his daughter.
Jake says he’s into his dad’s Dragons series, and he has a growing collection at home.
Now that the children are older, McFarlane says he invites their comments on some of his creations, wanting to find out what they think is cool or not.
“He’ll bring home sketches and models and show us,” says Kate. “He’ll ask if it reminds us of a person (or character).”
It’s not all about fantasy and adventure or “Spawn” or sci-fi when it comes to the McFarlane family’s free time.
Creative talk comes in a different form – with games and activities they engage in as a family.
When Jake’s not in school, he says he often visits his dad’s office.
“My dad helps me draw some of his stuff. I like to color them in,” says the second-grader, who likes to sit at his dad’s computer and draw electronically.
“We used to go to As You Wish (pottery studio) and make clay figures and paint them,” says Cyan.
Traditional games like Monopoly and card games like Hearts are also family favorites.
“We play Pictionary and Cranium,” says Kate, adding that her dad is the designated artist for drawing games.
A perfectionist by nature, detail is always important to McFarlane.
“He gets into such detail (with his drawings), sometimes we’d run out of time.”

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A strawberry slushy helps Olivia Ward, 4, of Gilbert, stay cool in the car.

This time of year, even quick trips into the grocery story or gas station give your car plenty of time to transform from refreshingly cool to an unbearable inferno.
Everything from the seat belt to the gearshift to the steering wheel is sizzling. No doubt, so are you. The sweet breeze from the air-conditioner can’t come quick enough.
Imagine if you were sitting in the backseat. Facing backwards.
In the summer, it’s a toasty car ride for tots, whether they’re old enough to face forward or still too tiny to turn around.
Suzanne Clinton, who teaches a class for new parents at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, always warns new parents to be aware of hot seat buckles during the summer. Clinton said she tells parents not to leave the infant carrier in the car.
But if the carrier does stay in the car, it won’t get quite as hot if it’s covered with a towel. Clinton also suggests that parents carry a small spray bottle in the diaper bag to squirt hot buckles before snapping in baby.
Shari Griffin, 43, of Ahwatukee, used to freeze water bottles and put them in her kids’ car seats when she ran errands. It cooled off the buckles, but it ended up being a mess.
That mess got her thinking, and those thoughts have turned into a successful business. Three years ago, Griffin invented Cold Seat, a freezable car seat cover. She introduced the seat to Australia this year.
“It redirects their attention,” Griffin said of the Cold Seat. “Now, you have just put them in a nice cool environment. My kids weren’t letting me leave the house without it.”
Although options are lean in this department, here are some ways to help keep kids cool this summer in the backseat.
- Cold Seat, $49.95, available online at www.coldseat.com. The seat uses freezable ice packs tucked inside a kid-designed cover to cool off car seat buckles before your kiddo hops in. Just drape the cover over the seat when you run into the store, or wherever you are, and take it off when you get back to the car. Pop it in the freezer when you get home so it’s ready for the next outing. Christine Rogers, co-owner of Mesa baby boutique Room 4 Baby, said her shoppers are loving it. “That’s our number-one seller right now,” Rogers said. “It’s a very cool, cool product.”
- Sun shades for car windows, between $10-$20, available online at www.walmart.com, www.amazon.com and locally at stores like Babies R Us and Target. Yes, the “Baby On Board” shades are a little played out and cheesy, but they significantly help cut the heat and glare from the sun.
Fisher Price has a color-changing sun shade that sticks to the window and gets darker in sunlight and lighter at night. Eddie Bauer has a rear-window shade, available at Target, which keeps the sun off of your rear-facing baby.
- Fisher Price snack tray, about $12, available at www.amazon.com. The tray snaps onto strollers and car seats, and makes it easy for kids to cool off with a sippy cup of cold water or juice, or a snack of cold fruit. If nothing else, it at least distracts the little guys, and isn’t that half the battle?
- The Insulator, by Playtex, about $8 for a two-pack at Babies R Us. The next generation of sippy cups, the Insulator keeps drinks cooler longer than other spill-proof cups. It’s also sweat proof.
- Pacifeeder by Savi Baby, $16.99 at www.pacifeeder.com. The hands-free bottle can hook onto car seats and strollers so baby can get a cool, refreshing drink of formula or juice even if she can’t feed herself yet. The liquid in the straw will only go up, and will not go back down, so baby doesn’t have to work to get the drink back up the straw after taking a break. Babies need to be at least three months old to use it.
- Evian mineral water spray, $5.50-$16.50 depending on the size, available at www.amazon.com or warehouse stores like Sam’s Club. The small bottle easily fits inside your purse, the bigger in the diaper bag. When you get back to the car, squirt off the buckles and give a little spray on your toasty tots. They’ll think it’s fun and refreshing.
- Drive-thru. If all else fails, hit up Sonic, where kids who are old enough to complain about the heat will be satisfied by a cool slush made of fruit juice or Powerade.

A blog for moms: “Mamas and Papas,” part of tucsoncitizen.com/moms, a new Citizen Web page devoted to parenting. Today: • Boogers be gone!

Kids & Cars columnist, Karina Bland

My family drove to Disneyland and back over Memorial Day weekend, the official start of the summer vacation season.

The six-hour drive each way is plenty of time to get cramped up and restless. So, on rest stops, we stretch like cats and walk like zombies. We jump up and down and shake our legs out to get the blood moving.

People stare. We don’t care.

It’s tough to sit so still for so long. Here are tips to get your family to burn a little energy before they get back in the car after a rest stop:

• Keep a football, Frisbee or jump rope in the trunk. At rest stops, there are often open spaces to run, though, from previous experience, I don’t recommend playing where people walk their pets. Kids can even play in an empty part of the parking lot, if a grown-up keeps watch for other cars.

• Grumpy backseat passengers will return to the car feeling better after even a 10- or 15-minute game of tag, kick-the-can, or red-light, green-light. No games of hide-and-go-seek on the road, because you don’t want to lose sight of a little one at a rest stop for even a few minutes. Get the rules of more than 250 active games at www.centerofweb.com/kids/games.

• Stay at hotels with swimming pools if you’re stopping overnight. A dip in the pool rinses away the dust from the road, as well as wears out the kids so they’ll sleep well, even in a strange place.

• If you eat at a fast-food restaurant, pick one with some sort of playland. Typically, if you’re traveling in an area where the weather is hot, they will be indoors and air-conditioned. You can map out the McDonald’s playlands along your route at go.map point.net/mcdon aldsx/TripInput.aspx.

Questions about cars and kids? Reach the reporter at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8614.

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For past Karina Bland columns, visit the Arizona Republic’s website.