Each year, Baby Center polls parents to find out what they named their newborn. In 2018, more than 742,000 parents answered.

Based on that data, here are the top baby names for 2018.

Girls:

1. Sophia 2. Olivia 3. Emma 4. Ava 5. Isabella 6. Aria 7. Riley 8. Amelia 9. Mia 10. Layla

Boys:

1. Jackson 2. Liam 3. Noah 4. Aiden 5. Caden 6. Grayson 7. Lucas 8. Mason 9. Oliver 10. Elijah

Sophia celebrates her ninth consecutive year as the top choice for girls, while Jackson remains the most popular name for boys for six years running. Oliver and Layla both jumped into the top 10, pushing out Logan and Zoe. The fastest climbers of 2018 include Everly, Isla, Leo, and Carson.

These are the top ten, head to Baby Center to see all 100 top baby names for 2018. If you click on a name, you can discover its popularity over the years (data FTW!). Baby Center also offers predictions of future trends in baby names (inc. sneakers, gender-swaps, and Southern states), as well as alternatives to popular names.

Previously: Heather used to be a popular baby name

(Neatorama)

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When my daughter was little, I had a mirror leaning against the wall for her to look in. For a while, she thought she had a playmate and would interact with this "other" baby. She would laugh with it and sometimes even kiss it. It was adorable. So I had to chuckle when I saw this video. This little guy probably hasn't had a mirror at his height before. From what I can gather, he thinks this standalone department store mirror is a window and that if he could just get around it, he could play with his new friend. Read the rest

This is fun.

Using his phone, a dad in Boston put a digital filter on his daughter's face. It made the poor thing look like a little John C. Reilly in a pink fleece onesie.

Baby Reilly's dad, Joe Gaudet of Boston, then did a great impression of the real Reilly.

(What service had John C. Reilly as a filter option?)

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Want to see the making of a badass, one-of-a-kind highchair that's fashioned after an AT-ST Walker from Star Wars?

Of course you do. Matt of Never Not Making leads the way.

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Purdue University researchers built this bizarre crawling robot baby to study how real infants kick up dirt and bacteria from carpet that they then inhale. Engineer Brandon Boor and his colleagues ran the robot over carpet samples removed from people's homes and then analyzed the particulates that were stirred up. Turns out that the particle concentration is as much as 20 times greater than higher up in the room where we adults breathe. That isn't necessarily bad though, Boor says.

"Many studies have shown that inhalation exposure to microbes and allergen-carrying particles in that portion of life plays a significant role in both the development of, and protection from, asthma and allergic diseases," says Boor, an assistant professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering. "There are studies that have shown that being exposed to a high diversity and concentration of biological materials may reduce the prevalence of asthma and allergies later in life."

(Purdue University)

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Oh, just a baby riding around on a robotic vacuum. Usually it's a cat, but today it's someone's sprog.

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According to her mom, blogger Christy Keane, baby Charly was born "profoundly deaf." In this truly heartwarming video, you'll see this precious child responding to her mom's voice for the first time ever through the miracle of hearing aids.

Charly gets quite emotional and seems unsure whether to smile or cry. Who can blame her?

On Instagram, Keane writes, "We didn't think she would hear anything so this was more incredible than I can put in to words."

Oh, my heart.

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The first thing I thought when I saw these glow-in-the-dark pacifiers was that they'd be easy to find when junior flings them in the middle of the night.

Then I thought, oh these can't be for real babies, these must be for ravers.

But no, they are actually for babies (and toddlers). These fancy orthodontic BPA-free binkies come in three "stages" to fit your child's mouth. Or yours. I don't judge.

They're made by the design team at Smilo and are available for $9.99/3-pack.

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Oh sure, you could buy something cute from their regular ol' baby registry but what do most new moms really want? Time. Real quality time with their new baby. Time to recover from pregnancy and childbirth.

And that time is money.

Few U.S. employers offer a full 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, simply because it isn't mandated in this country. That too-often forces working moms to become separated from their newborns and shuffled back into the office prematurely.

That's where the Take 12 maternity leave registry service comes in. It provides a way for expecting women to crowdsource their maternity leave. Friends and family can sign up to cover the costs of quality time.

Margi Scott, a mom of four, founded Take 12 as a way to address the problem. She writes:

This is not an entitlement issue. Mothers need time with their babies after birth to bond and recover from labor and pregnancy...

THE POINT is that as a nation we put undue emotional, mental, physical, and financial stress on 50% of our work force who are also the mothers to the future of our country in their most vulnerable stage of life.

This stress also directly effects maternal and infant mortality rates in this country.

This is a direct cost that men in the workforce do not endure in the same way. Our experiences in this regard are not equal, yet we expect equal response.

So, it's essentially a clever method for growing families to hit up folks for cash instead of gifts, while simultaneously shining a light on a real issue. Read the rest

Whoa. After filming Carpool Karaoke, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis resuscitated a stranger's baby: Read the rest

It's a few years old, actually, but this video of a cute baby owl "dancing" to a fuzzy owl-shaped comforting toy that sings “Monster Mash” is well deserving of a viral revival. Read the rest

I recently started rock-climbing and have been wanting to find a trainer. This one will do nicely.

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Who can resist babies that bOING! bOING!?

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There's more than one right way to have a baby. What Maggie Koerth-Baker learned about evidence-based pregnancy, risk, and the choices we make about healthcare.

Video Link. [Alain Leroux, via Joe Sabia]

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There is no excuse for crappy nativity scenes. I can't help you with building the manger, though. Ask Mark.

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Giant panda cubs lie in a crib at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan province September 26, 2011. (REUTERS/China Daily) Read the rest