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Nerdy Baby: Fun for the Whole Nerdy Family

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When Tiffany Ard became a mom, she noticed a huge push toward exposing babies to academic enrichment from an early age.

"It just seemed like a little much," Ard recalls, "kind of silly." Inspired by her own (self-described) "weird sense of humor," Ard decided to take the enrichment trend to a new level, designing a set of alphabet blocks for a friend's new baby that featured academically enriching tidbits such as "E is for Electromagnet" and "I is for Ichthyosaur."

"I took it to a very nerdy extreme," says Ard, an artist and award-winning designer. "Once I had done that, it just kind of entertained and amused me so I ran with it." Ard soon founded Nerdy Baby, a silly science-inspired venture that combines her offbeat sense of humor with her artistic talent and love of all things science.

Ard's Nerdy Baby ABC Flash Cards feature such "basics" as "K is for Kepler's Third Law," for example, and "B is for Binary Code." (Nerdy bonus fun fact: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is written in binary code on that particular card.) Her Nerdy Baby 1-2-3 Flash Cards teach counting through science facts such as "one electron in a hydrogen molecule," "seven taxonomy classification levels" and the thankfully up-to-date "eight planets in our solar system." These same number facts are showcased on a colorful 1-2-3 Poster, which also includes Pi, and her Prime Number Counting Chart is whimsically illustrated for the budding mathematician in every baby.

While babies and toddlers enjoy Ard's creations, with their playful artwork and fun-to-grab-onto durability, it's the nerdy parents (and their nerdy gift-giving friends) who are especially enamored with her unique line.

"Most of the time it's a gift calling the parents a nerd," she giggles. "This will be perfect. Your baby is going to so be a nerd!"

Ard has seen plenty of adults buying her work for themselves and their friends, too.

"I've seen people decorate their offices or give them to each other," she says. It's the perfect way to say, "You're such a nerd!" (That's a compliment to many of us, you know!)

Ard also has seen her work inspire older children to explore science.

"It has been kind of cool to hear from people with older kids," she says. "They tell me, 'My kids had so much fun because we didn't know what some of this stuff was so we started looking it up and it turned into like a science treasure hunt.'"

The popularity of Ard's science-inspired products has surprised even her.

"People are so excited," she says. "People contact me to say, 'Wow, this is so fun and so silly and we get the joke!' That's been really fun meeting up with people who share my weird sense of humor."

Pat Schrodinger's Kitty -- Ard's parody of the popular and ubiquitous children's book Pat the Bunny -- for example, takes the nerd joke to new heights as it explores the work of physicists Paul Dirac and Enrico Fermi in a colorful lift-the-flap board book format.

"It is so way over the top silly it kind of epitomizes my weird sense of humor," Ard says. "When I made it, honestly I thought maybe four people in the world were going to think this is funny. You have to have people who have kids and have read Pat the Bunny (numerous times) and love physics and science and will get the jokes in it." As it turns out, it's become one of her most popular items. With shiny mirrors, colorful illustrations and plenty of flaps to lift (peek-a-boo, find the neutrino!), kids love it too.

Clearly, nerdy parents were hungry for a line of baby products that spoke their unique language.

"That's kind of the idea," says Ard. "When you become a parent, whatever you were before doesn't go away. So if you were a geek before, your brain doesn't suddenly turn to mush." (OK, she allows for the brain numbing realities of sleep deprivation, but the point is, you don't give up all your previous interests.)

"Parents who are into sports," Ard continues, "that's easy. They can find a million things to decorate their kids' rooms. These are just some little things that honor what the parent was before and still is."

Ard is developing new items all the time, including some plush microscopes that are central to a new "luxury biology nerd set" she's got in the works. Similar to popular "How to Use the Potty" books, she says, this new set will approach science in the same "Aren't you excited? You're a big girl now!" manner, "but as though they're going to go work in a lab, like, 'Here's how to prep a slide. Yea! I'm a big boy now!'"

Ard's entire line is made in the United States, she says, "under my close supervision, usually at my dining room table." When she's not creating the items by hand, she works with responsible printers in her area to ensure her products are as environmentally and economically friendly as possible.

Her kids get involved, too. Her older son, now 6, has taken on a lead role in her marketing efforts.

"It's kind of embarrassing," says Ard of her son's enthusiasm. "He carries around my business card (saying), 'Do you like science? You should get my mom's artwork!'"

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