Stowe presents to the Mercer Island City Council about preschool and early childhood issues. Click here to listen to a recording of her presentation.

Leah raises her hand to flag down guests who will view her slide show. The 2nd graders made KidPix presentations about Australia and parents were invited to the school computer lab on Wednesday morning to view them.

Nathan has a new bunk bed and he couldn't be more proud.

Spring has sprung, with this beautiful display from a tree in our front yard.

The new landscaping and patio are finished.

Nathan wanted badly to go fishing this weekend, though I explained we were unlikely to catch anything off the dock on Lake Washington. He didn't care.

Martha has kneepads to go with her elbowpads to go with her new bike helmet.

Nathan is a fish!

He found the nerve to swim without a life jacket, spending half an hour with me in the pool this afternoon swimming back and forth by himself in the swim lane. He even tried it in 11 foot water.

A rare date with Tessa and Eric, here for the weekend. We went to Teatro Zinzanni for dinner/theatre.

Nathan has a new bunch of crickets, which we bought him on our trip to Petco. He hadn't been feeling well lately, so has been taking lots of long naps--his hair gets so messed up when he sleeps.

Somebody backed a minivan into my car, creating this dent. Theresa and Eric suggest next steps.

Baby name wizard

We deliberately tried to find uncommon names for our kids, so it's too bad we didn't consult the babyname wizard site first:
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

Note that "Martha" is a great name for a girl now, because it's been out of favor for almost a century. Both "Jennifer" and "Richard" have been uncommon for so long that they're worth revisiting. Unfortunately both Leah and "Nathan" are poised for big rebounds. "John" is a great name too, and maybe "Steve", though "Michael" is still a bit too popular--but wait another decade or two.

Happy birthday! The kids helped mommy blow out the candles.

Birthday cake for mommy. Leah took this photo with her camera.

Valentine's Day at Leah's school. They made hats and exchanged little Valentine notes.

Our live tadpoles arrived in the mail! Now Nathan finally has a real pet, so expect him to spend hours staring at his Planet Frog aquarium.

We dropped in at the Rainy Day Event sponsored by Mercer Island Preschool Association. Nathan, Leah, and Martha did lots of crafts, including these pavers complete with their handprints.

I got a new iPod Mini this week, and look who is lounging around listening to the latest music.

Leah's teacher keeps an up-to-date classroom web page where you can see the latest on what she's doing in 2nd grade. Leah posed in this photo to show off the fancy new gel pens donated by the PTA:

Daycare crisis on Mercer Island!

This week's Mercer Island Reporter tells the sad tale of the day care center where we send Martha:


The article ends with this comment from one of the Island's renowned experts:

Stowe Sprague, who has one child at Big Bird, also belongs to the Mercer Island Preschool Association.

``The Island has had a really, really wonderful tradition of working as a team,'' Sprague said.

She and a team of other MIPA members are working together to try to continue in that vein to address the larger issue of overall needs for more daycare, preschool and play space on the Island.

``There's practically zero spaces in daycare right now,'' Sprague said. ``Parents are scrambling and there's nothing; there's no openings.''

[that quote wasn't really verbatim: she said "There are practically" and "There are no openings".]

Leah takes hip-hop dance lessons every Tuesday night. Although I'm quite proud of her, I must say she dances like her father.

Martha helped Nathan search for more bugs for his collection, finding this bee in our front yard.

Leah's speech

Leah was so inspired by her mother's public address at the Mercer Island School District board meeting last night, that she wrote her own speech afterwards.

"I have a dream," Leah's speech begins, and she lists her arguments for why daycare centers shouldn't be closed. "For an example, we'll start with Barbies... Say you like pink." But you go into the store and buy purple instead and later change your mind. Should you complain? No. "You have to be thankful for what you have...Everyone, I have a dream."

Unseasonably warm weather in Seattle is causing our trees to bud.

Leah's Religious Education
She's either a little mixed up, or they are not teaching her well. She says she is going through "condemnation” as part of the process leading to “First Reunion.” The priest told her a story about how much harder things were in the past, when the “numbs” used to whack the children whenever they did something wrong.

Leah and Daddy went on a date this morning to the Uwajimaya Japanese store in Seattle. We bought some food to cook a nice Japanese dinner tonight, and we also got Leah some flash cards to help her study her kana characters:

What is this bug? Nathan found it around the house and we pinned it into his collection, but we're not sure what it's called.

Mercer Island School District Community Forum

I'm glad I attended last night's MISD Board Governance Community Forum . The school board members presented their proposal for changing the school mission and high-level strategic plan for the district, and then we discussed it. They divided the audience of roughly 100 people into small breakout sessions where we discussed specifics about two "ends policies", high-level statements of what MISD thinks students should be when they complete their education. Generally the discussion is very motherhood-and-apple-pie (who would disagree with the statement "students will demonstrate good character"?) so the proof will be in the follow-up meetings where all this gets translated into specific policies.

The best part was interacting with school board members, and I feel now that I know Leslie Ferrell, who was the board member who moderated my small group.

Martha on Hello Kitty

I was surfing my blogs when this photo came up:

and Martha immediately said "Hello Kitty!"

Now come on, how does a 2-year-old know these things?

Nathan and Martha are hard at work with their playdoh.

Anniversary night dinner's menu. In New Orleans.

Our first day on real snow, at Snoqualmie. Here's Leah going up the "magic carpet" to the bunny slope.

There's Nathan, with his mother far behind him.

Our driveway was steep enough, slippery enough for a challenging ride.

Enough wet snow to make a snowman, but not enough persistance to make him 3 balls tall.

We woke up this morning to our first real snowfall! Can't wait to get outside!

Nathan amazes us with his new paper construction projects. Here -- totally his own idea, built and designed entirely by himself -- he shows off his latest: an elevator. It really works too: pull the string and the elevator car goes up and down.

The kids had school, but I had a day off from work, so I lunch with Nathan at his school.

Leah's school had their annual Hoe-Down dance party last night, and boy did she have a good time. (See her in the middle of the photo, with her cowboy hat).

BBC NEWS | UK | Mohammed enters top boys' names

BBC NEWS | UK | Mohammed enters top boys' names

Mohammed has become one of the most popular names for baby boys in England and Wales. It entered the top 20 most commonly chosen names for 2004 baby boys for the first time ever, according to the Office for National Statistics.

But there was little change at the top with Jack and Emily retaining their status as the most popular name for newborn boys and girls.

Martha walks down the steps at Nottoway, the big plantation. We stayed overnight in the "bridal suite", which turns out to be the best room for bringing kids.

We spent the night in this swamp near Gibson, Louisiana.

Here we are in front of Jackson Square, at the heart of the French Quarter.

We visited the Blaine Kern Mardis Gras museum, with its fabulous displays of parade sculptures and ornate costumes like this one.

White Christmas

It's snowing in New Orleans! This is the first snow since 1989, and the first white Christmas EVER! Now, tell us why we had looked forward to a warm Christmas "down south" and had travelled all the way from Seattle...? (Seattle is over 50 on Christmas day...)

Gramma-Gramma

The kids are having a great time visiting with their great-grandmother, and the family dog Reny:

Merry Christmas comes before Christmas at Christmas dinner with Granlea!

Sisters: Martha was just beaming when Leah invited her to sleep in her room on Saturday night. She started on a sleeping bag, but soon ended up in bed along with her sister.

Leah's Hip-Hop Video

Leah and her friend Jacob danced a HipHop Christmas with her partner Jacob and here's the video.

New videos

I spent the weekend getting caught up on some of my video editing and I made several new ones, including short clips of the kids on a visit to a blueberry patch, and walking around a pond while in New Hampshire last Summer.

 

Both videos were designed for a widescreen (16:9) TV display, so they look a little scrunched.  I would love to hear if there’s a Windows Media player that supports the different aspect ratio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leah has rediscovered an old friend, "Saru-chan", the stuffed monkey doll I picked up for her on a trip to Japan many years ago. She and Saru are inseparable, and she dotes on him with motherly attention to details of what he eats, studies, and wears. In this photo, she dressed him with clothes borrowed from a Madeline doll.

Mommy and Martha cuddle by an early morning fire.

Martha and I went on a date this afternoon, to Peet's Coffee. She wanted to talk about fish, and afterwards we stopped at Larry's to buy sea bass.

Mercer Island is visited by a Christmas Ship each year and we went to watch the arrival at the Beach Club.

The kids bundled up and watched with wonder from the lake shore.