Picking up a sick(ish?) kiddo from school has me thinking of this decades-old panel from Ultimate Spider-Man.

Is there a technical term for the tension a parent feels between disapproving of what U.S. schools emphasize and how they operate but still being proud of their kid for doing well within that system?

We thought we’d intentionally given kiddo an uncommon name, but the local youth soccer league seems to have recruited all of the other kids with that name, and it’s very confusing for her.

Silly me, worrying about getting up on time to get kiddo to school early for a morning activity. I should have just trusted my brain to continue its streak of waking up an hour early and refusing to let me back asleep.

Dad tip: Always build in a buffer between the walk home from school and your next meeting so that there’s plenty of time in case you need to clean up a scraped elbow and serve medicinal ice cream.

Today, I attended my first kids’ soccer game since rereading James Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games” and since reading about Jacques Ellul’s ethic of non-power, and it turns out that makes a difference?

Kiddo is strong enough of a reader to do her own bedtime stories, but we’ve recently built up a small collection of French kids’ comics. Since she doesn’t read French, we’ve gone back to me (and mom) reading to her, and that’s kind of fun.

Look, nothing really new in here (Clearview should have made parents rethink the same ages ago, etc.), but yes, AI should get parents to be a hell of a lot more careful with posting pictures of kids.

Bien content que ma fille me fasse confiance pour traduire quelques mots fr français dans une épisode de My Little Pony.

Talking in the car about Unicode standards for emojis, like all daddy-daughter pairs.

Every game I bought myself for kiddo’s Switch has really only gotten playtime if kiddo has taken an interest in it.

Once again, ClassDojo shows how much of its business model is built on creating feelings of parental inadequacy.

Cet été, j’ai beaucoup réfléchi sur combien mon travail de prof rend bien plus facile la vie de parent pendant les vacances scolaires.

Playing the Portal series with kiddo is going well, except that she is (understandably, tbh) freaked out by the Valve screen that appears when you first load it.

Kiddo’s Father’s Day card has been addressed to “Dr. Spencer Greenhalgh,” which is technically accurate but still feels off.

“What am I, made of jokes tonight?” - kiddo, after telling two admittedly good ones

So, uh, is my kid’s dream about a peanut butter fountain a good or a bad omen for all the hours we’re spending in the car today?

Kiddo is a wild mix of adventurous and picky when it comes to food. She does not want the unobjectionable ravioli the rest of us are eating, but she is powering through the too-spicy-for-her curry leftovers in the fridge.

Bookmarking this so I can keep thinking about it.

Not only did my e-bike’s battery charger short out but the slow leak in the rear tire also turned into a straight up flat soon thereafter. Thanks to the student-run bike workshop on campus, I still got home in time to pick up kiddo from school, but I remain grumpy.

There was a Little Free Library just outside tonight’s restaurant, so kiddo’s working through a new book while we wait for food.

Setting up iMessage on an iPad for kiddo to use has immediately turned into Homestar Runner references, and I’m okay with that.

This got a dark chuckle from me.

Kiddo enjoys sending me messages encrypted in runes, and I enjoy brute forcing an interpretation like that scene in Cryptonomicon.

This afternoon was going pretty well until I totally spaced on kiddo’s orthodontist appointment. 😬

Kiddo accidentally emotionally traumatized a giant shrimp in her first D&D session this afternoon, and I honestly think that’s a great introduction to the game.

My office neighbor is starting a “department and friends” campaign, I asked if there was an age limit, and that’s how kiddo is joining her first D&D game later this month.

I feel like half of ClassDojo’s business model is “let’s prey on parental anxiety.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, what an uncaring dad I have!”

Since kiddo was really little, her aunt has been sending her “notable women,” “notable people of color,” “notable Indigenous people,” and “notable queer people” books, which has been good for just setting a background level of what we want our kid to be aware of as she grows up. When she came home with a “famous American” project, she was pretty clear up front that she was not going to choose a dude, and she turned to her little collection of books to come up with the three names that she needed to turn in to her teacher for approval before she could start the project.

Kiddo just told me to “make an Insight check” after fibbing to me about something, so it sounds like that D&D actual play podcast we’ve been listening to is making an impression.

No, I’m not ready for classes to start next week, but schools are cancelled for snow and I’m under the weather, so kiddo and I are watching the new Wallace and Gromit this morning.

Sun. afternoon, after chatting with other parents at birthday party: “Wow, spending time with fellow adults is great.” Sun. evening, after Zoom siblings’ game night: “Why don’t I do this more often?” Mon. morning, barely functional from not enough sleep: “Oh, right.”

Kiddo did lots of fuse bead art with cousins over Thanksgiving. When I complained that the train in the instruction manual was out of the 19th century and that kids’ stuff never acknowledges awesome modern trains, she improvised this high speed beauty for me.

Duolingo is one of those apps I really loved once but now can’t see as anything but creepy adware. It’s hard to complain when it’s teaching kiddo more French than I ever managed to, but I still worry I’ve sold her soul to that little green owl.

Kiddo is expressing her distaste for her “read aloud” homework by putting a lot of obviously false enthusiasm into her performance.