( Read more... )

"How are we going to keep [toddler] from chewing on my noses?"

Yesterday A. brought home a book that he said was recommended by his library specialist at school. It was The Butter Battle Book. Did they even realize it was about mutual assured destruction?

Yesterday I took E to the discount kids' movie, which was showing Barbie and the Three Musketeers. I was expecting to hate it, of course, but it was actually fairly good.

Barbie is Carinne, who starts out homologous to D'Artagnan: a relatively poor Gascon who comes to Paris to be a Musketeer, with a letter of introduction to M. Treville. ( Read more... )

During our vacation to Maine last week, we took a side trip to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Do Not Try This At Home. Yarmouth may not be the most boring place I've visited, but it's pretty bad. Better than Calais, worse than Dover ( Read more... )

This weekend I took E to get her first bike. ( Cellphone picture and video after the cut. )

Arthur got a NeoShifters set for his birthday. It's a Bionicles knockoff, from Mega Bloks (which has a niche making Lego knockoffs). Their shtick is that every character can be transformed into something else. This particular set has two creatures, which can be turned into vehicles ( Read more... )

Pink panthers prey on prancing purple polka-dotted pickled ponies.

My kids have been collecting Pokemon cards for a while, but not playing the game. Sometimes a friend at school will give one away; once E bought a booster pack. So they've got a bunch to look at, but not really enou to play with. So I gave them each a starter deck for Christmas.

They were thrilled. But they don't want to play the game; they ( Read more... )

Last week, we were on vacation in Maine. cvirtue wanted to take the kids to her great-aunt's ninety-somethingth birthday party on Sunday, so she and I drove up drove up separately, so I could get home on Saturday and have a day to recover before going back to work.

One hitch was that, at the time we left, I was still dealing with a nasty cold. Afraid ( Read more... )