The kids' report cards came home this week. The grades are E for exceeding the standard, M for meeting the standard consistently, P for progressing towards standard, N for not meeting the standard, and N/A for standard not assessed this term ( Read more... )

I was working late, when I heard repeated sniffling from upstairs. After a while I went to investigate, and sitting huddled on the top stair was Margaret, miserably sick with a cold. I sat a stair or two down to be closer to her level and hugged her, and she held me hard ( Read more... )

Yesterday Margaret wanted Redbones barbeque for dinner. We told her we couldn't afford restaurant food every day, but we could do it if we didn't go to the Dimsum restaurant today, which we often do on Saturdays. She agreed. My wife thought she would forget by today and throw a tantrum anyway when we refused to go to the Dimsum restaurant, but I ( Read more... )

Since our daughter will be kindergarten age in the fall, Elizabeth and I have been spending a lot of time researching public schools in the area. Our primary figure of merit has been Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System - MCAS - test distributions as adjusted for ethnic composition, not because we think that's a great way of grading ( Read more... )

Early this year, when Margaret was still three, on one of those nights when Margaret was up later than Elizabeth, I taught her the game of Fox and Hounds. At the time, I had to point out the legal options on every move, and often had to move for her. I also had to go out of my way to make blunders to give her a chance to win ( Read more... )

Me, on seeing an elaborate block castle in the nursery: "That's a wonderful castle, Margaret. Did you build it all by yourself?"

Margaret: "Yes."

Duncan, from the other room: "No."

Weight: dropped from perhaps 2nd percentile to perhaps 1st percentile. Height: rose from about 10th percentile to about 25th percentile.

I'm not sure whether that means our emphasis on getting food into him is working or not.

A couple months ago, I went through my Apache logs to check if a friend had downloaded an updated program I'd written. While browsing through the logs, I noticed that one of Margaret's picture pages was being hit several times a day. The page was this one ( Read more... )

A couple days ago I noticed the second floor toilet bowl was all clean. I assumed Elizabeth had done it, but tonight she said she hadn't. I guess we have a house elf.

If that wasn't proof enough, I caught a glimpse of a small humanoid cleaning the first floor toilet bowl today. She looked like her name might start with an "M".

In a rear facing car seat placed in the front seat, an infant's head can be torn off by an air bag deploying because of a simple fender bender. Between their introduction in the late 1980s through November 1, 1997, air bags saved about 2620 people - but they also killed 87 people, including 49 children under 10 ( Read more... )