So at first glance you react with the typical parental “OMG. Nooooooo.” And we feel bad for the mom. Then our brain starts to do the math and it doesn’t add up.

A quiet whisper of “oh my god, oh my god” is not the typical parental reaction. Okay, she’s in shock. But the video goes on too long with her repeating the same line. There would be more questions for the kids, there would be laughing, there would be cursing. A calm wandering (with a video camera) would not be happening.

She tries to hard to make it look real. The panning of the video doesnt make sense. The flour is totally all over the living room. It’s evenly spread on the sofa. It’s on the lamp. It’s on the wall. It’s on the door. It’s on the counter. It’s on the picture.

These kids are 4 and 2. If they dragged it from the pantry and started playing with it, it would stay on the floor. A bag of flour is heavy, for a toddler. If it went out of control, they’d be giggling and screaming at the mess. Mom would know something is up by the noise coming from down the hall and she’d be able to catch it before it got to this disastrous level.

Comments are disabled on the video’s page. If this was authentic, the stream of parents offering sympathy and support would be overflowing. Somewhere along the way, the message went off track and the math didn’t make sense. When the video was approaching 1M views, 1/3 of the feedback was “didn’t like” – that tells me the BS filter went off.

The reaction on Twitter was the same. At first parents were sympathetic – then reality struck.

Mary Napoli of Michigan describes how she walked into her living room to find the couches, carpet, walls and floors completely covered in flour and her two young sons playing in the snowlike mess.

To the skeptics, she says: “The boys had a nice ‘talking to’ by me and my husband after, you can bet on that … I may never buy flour again!” [ABC]

If you want to know what really happens when kids get in the flour – have a look at Sarah Funk‘s blog.

We all think we have one when we catch the most magical thing ever to happen with our kids on (digital) tape.  But whats the best treatment for a video that could go viral? Do you put it up on YouTube for the world to see, or do you save it for AFV for a shot at a hundred grand?

A London, Ontario baby caught a virus last week as Emmerson, the little boy afraid of sneezes, saw his popularity skyrocket with 10 million views in a matter of days. And appearances on Good Morning America.

There is money to be made off YouTube videos, Google offers revenue sharing off the ads they post at the bottom of the more popular videos,  if you sign up as a content partner.

Rebecca Black is in line for a nice payday for her viral hit, Friday.

Here are some of ther other best baby videos on YouTube.

Ripping Paper:

Laughing:

And of course, the most viewed video in the history of YouTube , Charlie Bit Me, with more than a quarter BILLION views.

As parents it’s fun to watch the videos because we get what’s happening to the kids on screen, ours act like goofballs all the time too, but try watching them with your infant or toddler on your lap – they’ll squeal with glee in complete understanding of the situation.

The most popular video I have on YouTube is of the day we had our sonogram with our oldest son and heard his heartbeat for the first time.

More than 90 000 people found that interesting.  Why? Who knows, it’s YouTube.

Every now and again he’ll grab a banana or slurp up some tomato soup or apple sauce, but basically his meals are pretty bland and of the same thing. everytime.

We just got back from an all inclusive in Mexico and tried to use the deep and varied buffet each night as a way to get him to spread his tastebuds wide and try different things.

No luck.

So for the past 2 weeks, we’ve drawn a solid line in the sand and are not budging until he tries something new each night. Sometimes its a slice of red pepper, or a chicken finger or a quesedilla (all foods he loved as a toddler). It’s been tough, but he’s been good at trying – until we put sauce on his noodles.

It’s sauce. On pasta. And it sent him over the edge.

We want our boys to have a wide, varied and courageous palate, but we definitely don’t want to go the “sneaky chef” route. All that does is get your kids a taste for chocolate cake (and it wont always have zucchini and beets in it).

New commercials for kids’ PediaSure gave us a pause to stop and consider it, (because it showed we weren’t alone in our struggles) but we quickly dismissed it as we do many prefab kid targeted foods. Our kids will eat the good stuff, made by us, grown by people.

Are your pre-schoolers good eaters? How do you convince them that sauce on pasta is a good thing?

Perhaps this could be why, since I became a father just over a year ago, my video camera is always charged, holstered and ready to shoot.

My favourite subject, of course, being my beautiful little boy, London. And I had a lot more time to shoot footage of him after I lost my full-time reporting gig earlier this year (I now work as a freelance music writer with the Vancouver Sun and have a few screenwriting projects in development).

Anyway, this is a great time for amateur filmmaking, because technology has made it so easy to capture memories.

You can, of course, simply shoot and archive the memories. But it’s also a lot of fun (and, for me, creatively fulfilling) to shoot and edit stories documenting a day out, a weekend away or an entire year, which is what I did with my short film, ONE.

Obviously, kids don’t give you a lot of warning before they do something cute, which means sometimes you just have to point and shoot and hope you got it. So you might not always have time to setup that perfect shot. Then again, sometimes it just pays to be in the right spot and the right time.

Still, there are some tricks and tips you can take advantage of in order to make more memorable videos:

1. Shoot lots: With the advancement in ACVHD consumer cameras that use memory cards and internal hard drives to record HD video, proud parents no longer have to worry about blowing through all their pricey DV tape stock. So shoot lots and experiment with different angles. Then pick the best shot or shots and delete the ones that aren’t up to your standards.

(Keep in mind that, if you’re shooting ACVHD video, you’ll need a computer that can handle HD footage, a lot of storage space and editing software capable of handling ACVHD footage.)

2. Zoom: Unless you’re a pro videographer, don’t use it. If you use it to frame your shots tighter, make sure your electronic stabilization is engaged, or use a tripod. Nobody likes watching shaky camera work, unless you’ve filmed a close encounter of the third kind or some kind of natural disaster. Better to move towards your subject than zoom towards it. If you do zoom in towards something, try and make it as smooth as possible, or edit the zooming motion out and cut straight to the close up.

3. Framing: Obviously, framing can make a shot. Try not to have floating heads or cut people off at the forehead. If you’re familiar with photography’s rule of thirds, it’s a good one to implement with video too. Some people just know how to frame interesting shots, others don’t.

4. Sound: Audio is always an issue when shooting video. The onboard microphones on cameras have come along way, but they pick up a lot or peripheral noise. However, for most consumer shooting, they do the trick. If you want something better, pick of a Rode VideoMic. At just over $100, they’re reasonable, and they’re great for picking up the kids (or whatever else you’re pointing the camera at) and cutting out annoying clatter.

5. Editing: Video editing software can be frustrating to learn, but some of the more popular ones, like iMovie or Final Cut Studio are fairly basic to use. Just remember to save your work, often.

6. Music: It’s nice to put music to video. I cut ONE to my friend’s song, the artist Kingsway, with permission. You can use popular artists, too, but keep in mind that if you post the videos to a public forum, such as Facebook, it will be taken down for Copyright infringement.

Happy shooting!

Equipment

Here’s what I used to shoot the short film, ONE:

A Canon Vixia HF-10 HD camera. It’s a consumer camera, shoots full 1080p HD (ACVHD) and has three different frame rates, 60i (interlaced/normal); as well as 24p and 30p. The “p” stands for “progressive”. This means the images it captures are not interlaced.

Anyway, I stick to 30p – 24p can give more of a film look but it’s not as good for quick movements and is more challenging to upload it into editing software. With 30p, I just plug the camera into my Mac and upload into Final Cut.

(A great site to compare video cameras is CamcorderInfo.com)

My Mac: A 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB 800 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM with a 23-inch screen. It came with a 350 GB hard drive and also have a 1 TB Firewire drive that I use strictly for storing video.

Final Cut Pro – It’s costly and, for a hobbyist, the cheaper Final Cut Studio and even iMovie will be sufficient.

Magic Bullet – I like to fool around with various filters to give my videos a more film-like feel. Magic Bullet uses templates so you can check out how each one will affect the video. There are lots to choose from so you can either pick one to set a tone or, like I did in ONE, use many different kinds.

About the Author: Graeme McRanor is a freelance music writer and screenwriter. He lives with his son, London, in Gastown. You can follow him @graememcranor

The best gift we were given was a collection of baby food cookbooks from Annabel Karmel.

They run down the basics of how to make purees that are healthy, easy and your kids will love.

Simply load up on a bunch of ice cube trays and you can make big batches and freeze them.

Here’s how I do it: