Babies, books and balloons

We watched Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader last night. The show features a group of 5 or 6 fifth graders and an adult, so far college graduates, who have to answer questions about material from 1st through 5th grade. The fifth graders, of course, get all the questions right, while the adults come out looking like complete imbeciles. At least so far. They need to have a homeschooling mom on there. The really bad (well, maybe it's good...) thing about the show is that it's showing kids that much of the trivia they're learning in school is quickly forgotten and mostly useless once you become an adult. That's why we focus more on thinking skills, problem solving, tools for learning what you need to know, and basic skills (like reading and math you use every day). Ryan and Mira pick up all the little facts anyway, just from being curious, reading a lot, and asking questions all the time.

OK, I didn't mean to go off on that tangent at all. I meant to start with going to see my cousin's baby for the first time on Sunday. Corbin was born one month premature in December, and Sunday was his dedication at Jennifer and Matthew's church. Jennifer very generously made sure I got lots of baby time since I had not seen Corbin before. Boy, that is one cute baby. Seriously cute. Jennifer and Matthew seem like they're going to be great parents, and I'm very, very happy for them. Aunt Mid and Uncle Dot were there, and though I didn't get to spend much time with them, especially Uncle Dot, it was very nice to see them both.

The kids and I have checked out two new-to-us libraries this week. The library in Little Elm is about the size of my living room, and probably has about the same number of books. Fortunately the Frisco and Plano libraries do not require you to live in their towns to get a library card. All you need is a Texas drivers' license. We have a stack of books and DVDs from each library. Ryan has been really interested in aerodynamics lately, so a lot of the books are devoted to flight...several children's books and one for me. I'm excited by the prospect of learning about something completely new and hopefully helping him explore this as far as he wants to. Who knows where it will lead us.

Finally, for laughs, Ryan's origami obsession led us to a fun demonstration of perspective this week:




OK, so there's nothing here about balloons. I couldn't think of another "b" word for the title of this post.