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He couldn't play in a normal treehouse, so Make-a-Wish made him one of his own.

7 year-old Hayden Trigg has used a wheelchair for his entire life.

Hayden is from Austin, Texas, and suffers severe complications from congenital skeletal and nervous system disorders, making muscle coordination and movement extremely difficult.

It's a big battle to fight.


Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

But even though he's faced more adversity than most adults, Hayden is still a kid. He loves planes. And he loves trains.

After watching an episode of Discovery Channel's "Treehouse Masters," he fell in love with treehouses, too.

It didn't look like playing in a treehouse fort was something Hayden was ever going to be able to do, though.

That is, until the Make-a-Wish Foundation and its partners stepped in.

His family reached out to Make-a-Wish to see if there was any way they could help.

Last year, they found out that, amazingly, Hayden's wish was going to be granted: He was getting a treehouse.

“He spent months in the hospital last year — three months,” mother Adrienne Trigg told The Statesmen. “Everywhere we’d go, he’d tell people, ‘I’m getting a treehouse built for Make-A-Wish.’ It was something to look forward to and a distraction."

Two local companies, Austin Tree Houses and BioTrust Nutrition, also joined the effort to make a treehouse happen for Hayden, providing the funds and labor to create one seriously impressive structure.

Take a look at Hayden's amazing new hideaway:

Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

On May 17, the treehouse was finally finished. And Hayden's entire first-grade class came by to help him break it in with an epic pizza party.

Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

Photo by Make-a-Wish Foundation, used with permission.

Pretty soon, the treehouse was swarmed with kids, including a beaming Hayden.

Photo by Austin Tree Houses, used with permission.

Rob Soluri, the owner of Austin Tree Houses, said the structure was a $50,000 project. He told Upworthy it features two stories, a 65-foot ramp for Hayden's wheelchair, posters of Hayden's beloved trains and planes on the wall, and a bucket and pulley for hauling toys up into the second-floor loft.

"It was the best day of his life," Hayden's mom told "Good Morning America."

Even though the treehouse was built just for him, his mom says the long, wooden wheelchair ramp is still a struggle for Hayden.

Wheeling himself up to the house to play is a challenge. But it's a challenge he's tackled head-on as he continues physical therapy.

Cheers to Hayden for fighting for his right to be a kid, and to all the incredible heroes standing diligently in his corner.

Joy

Sorry, Labradors. After 31 years, America has a new favorite dog.

The American Kennel Club has crowned a new favorite.

via Pixabay

A sad-looking Labrador Retriever

The sweet-faced, loveable Labrador Retriever is no longer America’s favorite dog breed. The breed best known for having a heart of gold has been replaced by the smaller, more urban-friendly French Bulldog.

According to the American Kennel Club, for the past 31 years, the Labrador Retriever was America’s favorite dog, but it was eclipsed in 2022 by the Frenchie. The rankings are based on nearly 716,500 dogs newly registered in 2022, of which about 1 in 7 were Frenchies. Around 108,000 French Bulldogs were recorded in the U.S. in 2022, surpassing Labrador Retrievers by over 21,000.

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Pop Culture

Woman was mocked online for calling an $80 purse a 'luxury item.' Her response went viral.

"I'm so grateful that my dad was able to get me one. He worked so hard for that money.”

@zohtaco/TikTok

Zoe Gabriel, showing off her new purse from Charles & Keith

Insults of any kind are painful, but jabs towards someone’s financial status are their own breed.

In January 2023, Singapore-based Zoe Gabriel was on the receiving end of this particular flavor of mockery when she posted a TikTok about a purse from local retail brand Charles & Keith—a gift bought for her by her father.

In her excitement, the 17-year-old called the bag, which costs around $80, a “luxury” item as she unwrapped it. Her excitement was sadly cut short by some of the negative comments she received.

One comment seemed to stand out above the rest and prompted Gabriel to post an emotional response video.

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Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS.

On May 25, the show’s Instagram page posted a touching video of an off-the-cuff moment between Barrymore and a fan during a taping of her show. In the clip, Barrymore realizes that someone in the audience is crying. So, instead of ignoring the fan, she jumps to action to see what is the matter.

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PeacefulBarb's "7 Things Adult Children May Need to Hear"

Just like there are no hard-set rules for raising children, there is no perfect guidebook on how to be a supportive parent to an older child. As parents watch their kids grow and start their own families, it can be hard for them to navigate the new role they have in their lives.

That’s why Barb Schmidt, who goes by PeacefulBarb on TikTok, shared her list of the ‘7 Things Adult Children May Need to Hear’ from their parents. It’s a great starting point for parents who aren’t sure what their older children need.

Schmidt is an international best-selling author, sought-after motivational speaker, mindset coach and mindfulness teacher.

Here’s her list:

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Education

Nurse explains how babies breathe in utero and the internet is amazed

A new mom asked how babies practice breathing, and Nurse Jen delivered an answer that's blowing people's minds.

Nurse explains how babies breathe in utero.

There are so many questions out there that we don't realize we want to know the answers to until someone else asks. Once the question is in the vicinity of our ear holes, suddenly we're like, "Oh, yeah. How does that work?" That's pretty much how this TikTok video went for a lot of viewers, myself included.

I have had four (yes, four) children exit my body, and it never dawned on me to ask further than the initial question of how babies breathe in there. It's a question that most new moms either don't think to ask or ask only once and get a similar answer to the one I received, which is that they take in oxygen via their umbilical cord connected to the placenta, so they don't need to breathe in the traditional way we think of until after birth.

But when a new mom asked the people of the internet how her unborn baby was able to practice breathing without drowning, Jen Hamilton, an OB nurse, decided to answer in a video.

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A mother with a megaphone goes on strike.

Every parent knows that sometimes their kids, especially teenagers, can say things in the heat of the moment they don’t really mean. But the mother at the center of this story took her teenage son’s outburst seriously and turned it into an opportunity to teach him a lesson. The question is, did she go too far to make a point?

A 35-year-old mom wanted to learn if she had been too hard on her 14-year-old son, so she shared her story on Reddit’s AITA subforum (we've abbreviated the forum's name to avoid printing foul language). AITA is where people vote on whether the poster was right or wrong in how they handled a situation.

“Lately, he has been acting out a little at home and school, so I decided to sit him down to try and figure out what was happening,” the mother wrote in a post that received over 800 comments. She said that the boy had been cursing out his parents as well as his teacher.

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