Ahh ... high-maintenance children ...

Quoted: So it's back to school for the kiddoes, soon if not already. And what's for lunch? Lunch boxes and brown bags are so 2005, now it's all about the bento box, the coolest lunch carrier for kids, teachers and anyone who takes a lunch to work.

Weird. The kid was watching Sesame Street this morning and this came on. Now here it is on this list. Luckily they have "Watch It" links to the appearances if you need some more Sesame Street in your life today.

Quoted: With the kiddie show starting its 39th season today with an appearance by Feist, we count our favorite celebrity guests who figured out how to get to Sesame Street — including Ben Stiller, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash, and lots more

Haha! I love it! Move over, tea parties ... it's time for a coffee break.

Quoted: If you're one of those parents who, like me, has an early-morning 'no pestering until I have a cup of coffee down me' rule, you might like this wooden drip coffee kit. It'll give your kids something to tinker with while you fumble with the real thing.

I just started a new blog called "We Be Reading" ... it's a mixture of reviews for books I read and those that the kid reads. I have 4 posts up so far. Someday I hope to convince T to talk about what he is reading too. Add me to your reader!

Quoted: A few years ago we took Z to Toys R Us and, for the first time, he picked out a book all on his own.

A sweet profile of Carroll Spinney - Big Bird for almost 40 years and he's now 74 years old!

Quoted: Being Big Bird: After 4 decades in costume, puppeteer Caroll Spinney wouldn't change a feather
...
Spinney got his start on Sesame Street during its first season in 1969, after Muppets founder Jim Henson saw him perform at a puppeteer's convention.
...
Henson chose him as Big Bird after Frank Oz, who helped develop Bert, Grover and Cookie Monster, swore off costume puppets following a stint in commercials as the La Choy Dragon, which was equipped with an in-costume flame-thrower.

All personal property and just silliness issues aside, this is quite an ugly tree -- and how scary that the public health people in Wales think that the problem with being pricked by a hypodermic needle is the prick itself.

Quoted: A 150-year-old monkey puzzle tree is facing the chop after health and safety experts said its needles are a danger. The 50ft-tall tree is to be felled after it's needles were likened to syringes.
...
‘Every effort is made in this day and age to prevent children playing with discarded syringe needles,’ a report stated.
...
‘Every effort must be made to prevent children coming into contact with these potentially, equally sharp needles.’

Here again we are enabling stupid kids to move forward in life and become stupid adults. How about we just make a policy that kids need to work harder and pass? Oh no ... that's just silly.

Quoted: Proposed policy would allow student scores of zero to equal 50.
...
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.

I agree. The only time that the applied concepts method worked for me was in college when I took Calculus for Biologists and knew the biology well enough that it supplemented the learning of the calculus (which I had problems with in high school). But when I was younger, learning by concrete examples was not helpful.

Quoted: Frustrated math students may have a good excuse -- some of the teaching methods meant to make math more relevant may in fact be making it harder to understand, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

This is really distressing. There is a lot of discussion in the mommy blog community about BPA (Bisphenol A) and it is very easy to search for products that do not contain this chemical. Luckily we did not bottle feed our little guy at all.

Quoted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A chemical in some plastic food and drink packaging including baby bottles may be tied to early puberty and prostate and breast cancer, the U.S. government said on Tuesday. ...

The National Toxicology Program went further than previous U.S. government statements on possible health risks from BPA.

It said: "There is some concern for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children at current human exposures." The findings expressed concern about exposure in these populations, "based on effects in the prostate gland, mammary gland, and an earlier age for puberty in females."