jrtom

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/11/new-york-sun-column.html
and followup at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lenore-skenazy/more-from-americas-worst_b_96175.html
and
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/12/free-range-kids-blog.html

*ponder*

http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/02/05/1852201.shtml

:)

So, you remember those kids I have? The ones that I used to post pictures of with wisecracking captions?

Well, we didn't really stop taking pictures. But we did stop posting them for a while (most recently for a hard drive failure, but less recently I'm going to have to go with sheer lack of copons).

So anyway, while we're nowhere near completely caught up, I've just added on five months' worth. Only eight or so to go. And still with the smartass captions, because I know that's what brings people back. :)

They are posted here:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden/corwin/ (pictures of Corwin et al.)

and here:

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden/twins/ (nominally pictures of the twins)

As usual, the "uploaded date" is listed in parentheses so you can at least see what got added recently.

Have fun!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/technology/29techtoys.html

I do plan to play with my kids with computers, and not just because there are kinds of activities that one can do with computers that are at least difficult otherwise. But I'm a big fan of young kids playing with physical objects, and computers lend themselves a bit more to passive entertainment than I'd like.

I'd been thinking of doing the "Buy One Get One" thing for the One Laptop Per Child project; it looks like a good idea for the charity that is in it, and the laptop itself looks like it would be hard (if not impossible) for Corwin (and, eventually, the twins) to break it.

Now, I'm a bit less sure.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/13/sam_the_sesame_stree.html

Sometime when I'm not at work I'm going to have to check these out. (I sorrow that someone was freaked out by the "BRRRRRR-ING!" aliens, as those were among my favorite sketches ever, as several of my friends know. :) )

I wonder which seemingly innocuous things my kids are going to be bothered by?

We are proud to present our new twin boys:

Adric Connor (formerly known as "Baby B"), born 10:04 AM, 6 lbs 2 oz, 18 inches
and
Riley Owen (he who was once "Baby A"), born 10:06 AM, 7 lbs 11 oz, 19 inches

on Friday, 15 June 2007.

Megan and both boys are doing just fine; we came home from the hospital on Monday. Megan is actually doing very, very well in terms of recovery; she hasn't started doing handstands yet, but she's been up and about and only occasionally shows obvious signs of still being in recovery from major surgery (such as when laughing too hard makes her stomach hurt). Feeding two newborns is somewhat challenging, but we're working it out (imagine, for instance, Joshua finger-feeding both twins at once). Fortunately, Joshua has four weeks of parental leave (which he's taking now, on the grounds that otherwise he might as well not come home :) ), while Megan has 12 weeks off.

They're only a few days old, and they look pretty similar (especially when wrapped in a few blankets) but we're already starting to learn some differences between them. (We believe that they're fraternal rather than identical twins, although we haven't had this tested.) Adric is perhaps a bit more alert and aware of what's going on around him; he was checking things out when he was only a few hours old. Riley is more physical, and has several times demonstrated his patented 'thrashing' method of (a) escaping his wrappings and (b) deniably whapping his brother upside the head.

Corwin has been doing really well, for the most part. He likes spending time with the twins, would pick them up himself if given the opportunity, and only occasionally gets bent out of shape because they're using an old chair or stroller that he used to use.

As a silly astrological bonus: not only are they Geminis (heh)...since they were born in the Chinese Year of the (Fire) Pig (holy flaming pigs, Batman!), this of course means that they are Twin Pigs and that David Lynch will presumably be dropping by any time now to make a television show of them.

Pictures and other stuff are available at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden/twins .

Someone I know posted one of those "tell me about you/me" memes on their LJ recently, and one of the questions I ended up answering at more length than I expected. I thought it was interesting enough to post here:

( stuff goes here )

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden/corwin

As you can see, it's not that we haven't been taking them, just not taking the time to post them since, well, since we moved in May.

So there are now seven--count them, seven--new albums (and one updated album). Go nuts.

So I just went out to the living room to check on a quiet Corwin. (Usually he makes at least a moderate amount of noise; it's when he _stops_ making noise that you have to worry.)

I found that he had (a) turned on the television, (b) pressed "play" on the VCR, and was watching Creature Comforts. (No sound--he hadn't turned the amplifier on--but the multiple nature of our audiovisual system has confused more than one visitor with considerably more sophistication.)

Guess it's time to password-protect my desktop computer. At least. (Granted, I'm not sure that I really believe that a 14-month-old child has figured out what those buttons do. But I don't necessarily disbelieve it, either.)

The question is whether he has good taste in video entertainment, or just couldn't figure out how to change the channel. ;)