In the last two months, Birdie picked up Hide & Seek at preschool and we've started playing it at home. Unsurprisingly, my now four-year-old daughter isn't super great at Hide & Seek yet. Among the more hilarious ways I've found her so far ( Read more... )

Continuing on the vein of Birdie's media interests, let's talk about movies. Tl;dr; Disney's grip on my daughter's cultural imagination is very strong.

In March, Encanto was all the rage. In June, she went to Cinderella. That phase was painful, but it ended later in the summer and while Birdie absolutely knows who Cinderella is, she hasn't asked ( Read more... )

We've been watching Bluey since at least July 2023, and by "we" I mean mostly Birdie. You won't see it turn up on my television - year - in review summary as a completed season, because somehow I've still missed at least a few episodes in each of the three extant seasons, but we still watch a lot of Bluey here. And the virus has spread, my parents ( Read more... )

CategoryFinished This MonthFinished YTD
Books758
Comics031
Poetry17
Kids42471
Total50567
Slush Pile

What I ReadIf I learned anything from the 567 kids books I read to my daughter this year, it is that at this age, the cleverer the book the less likely Birdie is to enjoy it. For example, consider these three titles from the 42 I read to her in ( Read more... )

In 2022, I saw one concert.
In 2023, I more than doubled that number to six concerts.
In 2024, I doubled that number again all the way up to 13 concerts. That's still not a ton compared to my historical norms, but it still felt pretty darn good ( Read more... )

Thanks to the one-two combo of pandemic and kiddo, I had not been back to the Grog Shop since February 27, 2020 when I saw We Were Promised Jetpacks. I returned to see The Pietasters on Saturday, December 14 for a rare appearance in Cleveland ( Read more... )

On Saturday, December 14, my family went to Severance Hall to see the Orchestra. Or more precisely, to see a very small subset of the orchestra - a brass quintet along with a guest vocalist. The occasion was another "Music Explorers" session similar to the one Birdie & I went to in April. This time it was subtitled "Holiday Brass ( Read more... )

There used to be four small islands off of Panama City. Then they dug the Panama Canal, and needed somewhere to put all the rock that had been dug up. Very quickly the four small islands became The Amador Causeway. Now there are a variety of attractions on the causeway, including restaurants, duty free stores, a cruise ship terminal (under ( Read more... )

Birdie: "Mommy, I don't want you to talk to me anymore ever again. I have enough problems as it is."

She changed her mind pretty quickly, but that one has had us laughing for several days now.

CategoryFinished This MonthFinished YTD
Books951
Comics231
Poetry06
Kids33429
Total44517
Slush Pile
I track the books I read for three reasons ( Read more... )