I, Carpooled

Monday, 23 January 2012

If you want to see how incredibly adorable my daughter is, CLICK ON OVER to my wife’s blog, where she has posted five recent videos (as in, from the past four months) of Isla engaging in age-appropriate antics.

This evening, Owen and I read a couple chapters from The Invisible Island, by Ron Roy. We’re working our way through all the A to Z Mystery books. Yes, there is one book for each letter of the alphabet (plus five more – go figure).

The first book in the series that we read was The Talking T. Rex. Of course, the series starts with the letter A, but we didn’t know that it was a series at the time. We just happened to be at Como Zoo, and Owen saw the book sitting on a rack, and he asked if we could buy it. It only cost like $4, so I figured it was a decent bargain. When I was paging through the book later, I realized it was part of a series. So, we finished up the T book, then started with the A book. Now we are up to the letter I.

These are quite perfect books for us. There’s nothing too scary or upsetting for Owen. The mysteries keep us both interested in turning the pages, and each chapter takes us about 15 minutes to read. So, on late nights, we read one chapter. If we manage to settle down for the evening a little earlier, we read two or three chapters.

I whole-heartily endorse them for the 5-10 year old in your life.

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

One of my co-workers was kind enough to give me a ride to and from work today while the mechanics dismantled our Saturn looking for all the money I’ve made this week.

On the way home this evening, she made an astute observation. She has no children, but she is engaged, and she’s starting to think that kids might be in store for her near future. Nevertheless, she’s a bit nervous about the prospect of having the responsibility of taking care of a tiny human.

She noted that her friends that currently have children are often unable or unwilling to go out for fun evenings. Normally, everyone just assumes this is because kids are a big hassle: you have to get them to bed early, you can’t keep them in their seat at a restaurant, and you don’t dare bring them to that slasher movie everyone is raving about. However, my one-day carpooler said that her friends often bow out due to cost. Think about it: if you want to go to a restaurant with friends, bringing your kid means another meal to buy (okay, so we’re not talking about infants here, obviously), but leaving your kid home means paying for a baby-sitter. She said, more often than not, her friends decline offers not because of parental duties, but because of increased cost.

I thought that was an interesting observation. I was going to tell her that my wife and I usually decline invitations because we just don’t like people, but I don’t really know this co-worker that well, and I wanted to stay on her good side for the next time the car mechanics feel like eating my paycheck.