Category Archives: Bringing Up Baby

The travails of raisin’ kids.

To Eli on His Eighth Birthday

Your birthday celebration started on February 4th with a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga and will end some time around Christmas. The Tuesday after your birthday trip our friend Renèe gave you an awesome World of Goo-themed cake, undeterred by your reaction to the robot cake she made for your sixth birthday. May [...]

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Liza Loves Animals On the Internet

Misty has been haunting Pinterest ever since she discovered that it would serve her a never-ending stream of Doctor Who-related content. A while back she thought, what if I showed our animal-obsessed daughter the Pinterest board that has nothing but animals on it?

The answer: Liza becomes so enamored of Pinterest that her gasps of excitement [...]

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Night of the Ninjas

We started our Halloween festivities early Monday morning. Eli’s school was having Mad Scientist Day, a celebration I can completely get behind, so we put him in my lab coat, spiked his hair, and gave him purple highlights because that’s all the rage among hip young mad scientist these days. I too dressed up, for [...]

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Becoming Disillusioned With Insects

My first inkling that something was wrong happened the other night when Liza came running to me, holding her large stuffed bee and crying. “A fly landed on bee-hee-hee,” she sobbed, tears leaving shiny trails down her cheeks.

Liza had always loved flies, calling them our “usually fly pets”. I couldn’t understand why she as so [...]

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Hey, Stephen, How’s Liza Recovering From Her Surgery?

Friday, Liza had minor surgery to close an umbilical hernia. Our scene takes place Sunday afternoon.

INT. LIVING ROOM – AFTERNOON

This standard suburban living room is square and has all of its furniture away from the walls, leaving a continuous track around the center of the room. The MAN is in the living room. The GIRL [...]

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To Liza on Her Fourth Birthday

The weekend before your actual birthday we went to Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville to feed the “ducklings and fishies” that fill the park. We bought several loaves of old bread and did our best to make all of the animals hyperglycemic. You squeezed chunks of bread into balls that you would then throw [...]

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“Happy Birthday, Robot!” is an Excellent Storytelling Game

If you like storytelling games, and especially if you have young children in your life, I cannot recommend Daniel Solis’s Happy Birthday, Robot! highly enough. Using dice and coins, up to five players collaboratively create a story about Robot’s birthday. The game serves as creativity fuel, helps you practice collaborative storytelling, and is a whole [...]

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Friday Liza

Liza dressed for her Spring Music Concert on Thursday.

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Growing up Crafty

There are lots of things I love about Eli and Liza. They are kind and funny and smart and, best of all, interested in making things.

It’s a bit late in the season, but both of the kids wanted a scarf to wear. So yesterday Liza and I purchased yarn (she picked out both hers and [...]

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To Eli On His Seventh Birthday

Yesterday you were born; today you are seven. For your birthday we got you tubes in your ears. Hope you like them! You’ve always been prone to winter ear infections, and this year you’ve been on antibiotics almost continuously since December. The surgery center where they installed your tubes has a hall with fourteen curtained [...]

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