19 months: When you read you begin with ABC, when you sing you begin with Do-Re-Mi

This month was a learning month.  Learning A B C, 1 2 3, and Do-Re-Mi.  T can actually identify all the letters, although there are a few he mixes up.  The ones with four lines converging (K, X) and the ones with an embedded V (U, V, Y) cause trouble.  And I suspect that 1-2-3 are not really numbers at this point, but an ordered set (1 comes before 2, and then comes 3)

Baby and mommy are in the midst of a "Sound of Music" phase right now.  So the Netflix DVD of Sound of Music lives in the DVD player.  Videos are in the Favorites list on YouTube (and T can get to them himself on both iPhones).  And he can sing and dance to most of the songs.  I'm probably going to have most of the soundtrack memorized by the end of the month at the rate things are going.

May was also a month of Asian festivals.  S and L went to the Silk Screen Gala.  And since we dressed up, so did T. And we also took T with us to Thai Night, where he was the baby of the evening and provided some entertainment.

Task for the coming month:  The boy across the street informed T that he could only play with them if he could do math and read . . .

Book Review: Dinocalpyse Now by Chuck Wendig

Dinocalypse Now by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dinocalypse Now is a pulp book set in the world of a role playing game, Spirit of the Century. So you know what you are getting into, which is just a lot of fun. It moves quickly, with one cliffhanger and plot twist after another and leaves you with a smile with every chapter.

It suffers from having too many characters to follow. There are about three main story lines with the heros, and two more following the villians. While it is one way of introducing characters and giving you some reason to remember each, it means that the main one (and I am pretty sure that there is a main one, since it includes the obligatory romance) is short changed and the love triangle feels stilted.

It is a fun book to read, set in a setting that is fun (and not infrequently silly) to play. I like its setting of the scene and I'm looking forward to the remainder of the series to start showing up, which I'm hoping do a better job of developing individual characters.

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Parenting Month 18: Road trip!

This month was a month of learning. Learning the alphabet. Learning how to walk better. What animals sound like. And what to call everyone in the house.

And T enjoyed having grandma here (Khun Yaa). It meant not having to go to day care and getting to play at home every day. Of course, good things have to come to an end so in the middle of the month we had a grandparent shift change. One day he wakes up with one grandma in the house. The next he wakes up and there is a different grandma (and grandpa) in the house.

The other significant event was a road trip. We went off to Cincinnati to see S's professor celebrate impending retirement. We enjoyed the trip (with an iPad to entertain T dring the drive there) and T got to interact with more people (who probably have been seeing his pictures on Facebook for the past year). And he was the baby of the gathering, a role he filled nicely.


What is coming up? More time with grandparents. Which means lots of play, but also many lesson plans. Music, alphabet, numbers, exercise, . . .