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".]