Dad (after being kneed in the head during some rough housing): Oh dear God, someone help me!

William: No one will help you. I will bite your ear off.

“Don’t screw me up.”  Said to me while I was using a screwdriver to replace the batteries in a toy.

“Goodnight Princess.”

Mom:  William are you poopy?

William:  Actually, I can’t answer that question.

A new study from the UK reports that families with 2 daughters are the happiest.   Not surprisingly it also found ‘mums and dads with four children of any gender found it harder’.  So far I’m having a lot of fun with my 2 boys.

William, Quinn & Playdough

According to the LA Times, books are about to become obsolete in libraries.  A Newport area library is considering closing the current location and re-opening as a community centre with internet access and work stations, but no books.  Instead patrons would use a ‘netflix’ type of serve to order books from a central location.

I find this both refreshing – an old institution adapting to changing times and the needs of it’s patrons; and depressing – a library without books.  Is that still a library?

As a parent I mostly find it alarming.  William is just beginning to really appreciate all the library has to offer.  He’s becoming so much more aware of the world around him, and curious about how it all works.  Our most recent trip to the library ended with William begging me to borrow some books about space for him to look at at home.  I couldn’t fulfill his request because I’d let my card expire; I need to renew it.  We’ve gone to the library many times, and looked at books about many different topics, often covering astronomy, geography, social studies and biology in 20 minutes.  William was able to pick up books at random and flip through them, letting his interest grow or fade as he saw fit. That would never happen in a library without books.

William recently got a haircut.  I took him to a salon near our apartment that does kids’ haircuts for $12.  He had been wanting to grow his hair our.  But I got tired of fighting with him to let me comb it once a day.  For all William’s faults (there aren’t that many), he was totally awesome at the salon.

For kid not quite three he sat still for the first 90% of the haircut and didn’t cry or complain at all.  He seemed to enjoy all the attention from the stylist, getting spritzed with water, wearing the cape and looking at everything in the mirror.  His haircut turned out really well, and he looks so much more like a big boy.

William's Haircut

Haircut

William’s haircut inspired me to cut Quinn’s hair.  So today I gave him his first haircut.  It didn’t turn out so great.  Oh well.  It grows back. Next time I’ll take him to the salon.  I just wanted to give him his first haircut.  I saved the hair, in a little envelope.   Ironically, I think his hair cut makes him look more like a baby. What do you think?

Quinn's haircut

Rear side view of Quinn

Looking back at some old posts I found one about how much I love this blog.  Specifically how much I love neglecting this blog.

Haha!  This is my first post in months, in fact my first post of 2011.  It’s March.  I have ideas all the time about things I’d like to write about.  Alas, I’m too lazy, busy, tired or pathetic to bother writing them out.  Not anymore. Maybe.

I really do want to blog.  I want to share my ideas with random strangers (Are you out there random strangers?) and a few people I know who sometimes read this blog (Hi Mom!).

Not sure what’s going to happen, but I am going to try to blog more.  And likely more randomly.

TTYL!

Quinn

There is nothing more miserable than parenting while ill. If you are lucky, the other parent is well and can manage while you recover—you can just put in token appearances. If you aren’t lucky, you’re stuck trying to manage balls of energy who don’t want to give you a moment’s peace even when it is clear that you may well collapse if you don’t get a chance to rest.

Videos can only help so much. I have yet to find a solution, but I think that the answer may lie in a room with better locks and more equipped to deal with kids left to their own devices. However, I’m pretty sure installing a padded room in the apartment is a violation of the terms of our lease.

Having kids leads to making absolutely insane statements in earnest.

From having to say “no casting spells on your brother” to, today’s addition, “Quinn is not a monkey tree, don’t use him like one!”

I’ve contributed a piece on being a skeptic and a parent to the Swift blog on Randi.org. Link below:

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1228-skeptical-parenting-fighting-woo-at-play-group.html