Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Playroom landscape

Kids got to pull out playmobile for the first time in months yesterday. Kid #2 and #3 were thrilled.

Halloween

Kid #3's Halloween basket as photographed by kid #3:

Kids

Kid #3 this morning:

Everything is math.  Hoola hooping is math.  

Kid #3 last weekend:

Look both ways before you crash.  

The kids are also on a Taylor Swift binge.  Kid #1 declared that she's moved on from Hannah Montana to more sophisticated tastes.  They've also been watching the Twilight DVD quite a bit (12+ times?).  Today's youth culture. 

My Brother is getting married

My brother is getting married in rural France next August.  He and his future wife currently live in Rueil-Malmaison near Paris.  Our kids, especially kid #1, are looking forward to seeing Paris. 

All of which gets my parents to all three of their kids married off.  Two sets of grandchildren so far...

CMT Results or my kids are like me

Kid #1 got her CMT --- the CT standardized test -- results for 3rd grade a few days ago.  As I understand them, the reading and writing scores are nothing to blog about.  Like 70-80% of her schoolmates, she scored at the 'advanced' level, and as far as I can tell a bit above the mean for the school.  Her math raw score, on the other hand, is up in the upper 90% and considerably above the average, though I cannot determine her percentile. 

So her elementary school experience may be more like mine than I suspected.  Not that these math test actually test math ability. 

Today was the first day of school

'Slow Children' Warning Signs

Several weeks in I still find my mother-in-law's 'slow children' warning signs very amusing. 

Paintball

The kids found several dozen paintballs on the beach down the road. 

Kid #2 is seven years old

Chicken are here

One of the great aunts procured two chicken and two baby goats.  All showed up yesterday. Here's one of the chicken.  Shots of the goats all have kids in them.  Hard for me to tell if the photo is properly processed since I'm using an old and very dull laptop monitor. 

Update #1: as David asks in comments, what's the deal with the clipped beak? I assume this is because these are rental chicken that are rented to families with kids.  I am not involved in the process, but I'll ask. No idea how annoying this is to the chicken. 

Update #2: on a bit more reflection, it seems to me that clipping beaks may just be what one does if one holds chicken in close quarters (i.e. where these chicken come from).  Though this may be a bit more of a clip than most, I don't know. 

Update #3: David writes:

Clipping beaks impairs their ability to forage. I think they just do that for factory farms. Hens are usually pretty gentle. Roosters are different, of course.
Looks like a Rhode Island Red. Is it laying eggs for you?

One large egg on Monday, no reports of any more that have made it to me. 

Kids

Kids #1 and #3 have requested that their photos be posted.  They also requested the level of focus. 

Kid #1's Opti

Well, we didn't actually get it in the water yet.  But we're working on it....Kid #1 isn't so sure she like the idea of being the only girl in her age group.  Luckily, most of the instruction leaders are older girls/women (there are also male instructors, but they are not for the most part in charge). 

Obama's Popularity is Falling Rapidly

Obama's popularity with kid #1 has fallen off precipitously since she has learned that Obama wants to lengthen the school day and school year.   She gets angry just thinking about it.  The honeymoon is over. 

Dermacentor variabilis (Dog or Wood Tick)

My wife pulled this tick off kid #3 this morning, leaving the confirmation of her ID of it as a wood tick to me.  Yes, it does look like Dermacentor variabilis.  My wife took it off with a hot extinguished match head, used tweezers to pull out the rest, and put antibiotic ointment on the bite.  Not known to transmit Lyme Disease, but can carry other diseases.  (Shot with a point-ant-shoot with a macro setting with a dime for size) 

Boardgames

A paean to modern German boardgames in Wired.  Maybe something to look into to play with the kids, something less wearisome for adults than many traditional boardgames.  So far only memory and mancala are board-like games the kids and I all enjoy. 

Suzerain

I called my wife our suzerain this morning, seemed somehow appropriate.  

Athletic and Academic Rankings

We -- kids #1 and #2 and I -- went to part of the women's ECAC Division I Women's Gymnastics Championship on Saturday.  The results are a nice illustration that in many sports academic and athletic rankings have a strong negative correlation.  Only Cornell is a bit of an outlier here.  Yale has never ever won the division while Towson has won 12 times.  Harvard and Princeton don't seem to have Division I teams. 

1	Towson University	193.325
2	Cornell University	193.050
3	Temple University	191.475
4	William and Mary	190.125
5	University of Pennsylvania	190.075
6	Brown University	188.175
7	Yale University	184.450

Bridgeport Zoo

Kid #1 and #3 and I went to the Bridgeport Zoo for a birthday party. Lots of bite marks on the prairie dogs (but I'm not putting up photos where you can see the bite marks in their full gory).