As parents, we often look to certain growth milestones with longing.  Asking ourselves "When will my son start walking?" or thinking out load "Boy, it would be nice if my daughter could talk" -- unknowing to the fact that once a child starts talking they never, ever, ever stop.

It's this latest milestone that my daughter has reached that has begun this whole cycle anew: reading.

When your child can't read yet, it's easy to control the information they receive.  If you don't want them to know about some of the options on the menu, you don't it read them.  You get used to have this superpower...and then everything changes.

Today I was walking through Target with my daughter when a non-descript package caught her eye. "Cotton candy?!  Dad, that says cotton candy.  Can we get some?".  Great.

Oh, I remember the good ol' days when my daughter was illiterate.

This morning was a good opportunity to take some phenomenon in the natural world and explain what it was and how it works - all while the kids were naturally interested in it.  I try to look for opportunities to do this and encourage the kids to think about the mechanisms that are all around us. This happened during breakfast when Josiah wanted to have the bottle of honey to see it flow around inside the bottle as he turned it end over end.  Perfect opportunity to explain viscosity.  So we got out a bottle of corn syrup, molasses, and bubble solution and compared how they moved around inside their containers.  Honey was the absolute winner in viscosity (it was much slower than actual molasses, surprisingly or not).  Even if they don't remember the term, they hopefully will remember the example. Then I saw a good opportunity to transition this to the 3 states of matter (leaving out plasma for now) since solids don't flow and liquids do.   Coconut oil turned out to be a great example of a state transition (even better than ice) since it is solid at room temperature, but not "cold", and quickly liquifies on your warm skin. At least in kindergarten, I'm sure that my daughter is leaning a lot about social interaction -- but I'm hoping I can teach her something more:  to look at the world around her and be in wonder at how things work.

This is a great idea from Parent Hacks.  When kids are helping with mixing and measuring, put the bowl over the open dishwasher door.  When you're done -- close it and the dishwasher wash cycle will clean up the mess.  Done.  Easy. Link.

Sometimes you look at old pictures and think "Awwww".  I just look at this one and think how beat city my lawn was in 2006.  Yikes.  Eila looks cute, though.

Our neighbors gave us their piano. After getting a bunch of friends together to move it, I'm ready to begin tormenting the kids with piano lessons.

Here are some new pictures: