It’s that time of year (again) for signing the acceptable use policy for kiddo’s school, and I’m again grumpy about a lot of the details in here. Some of these details are me being a nitpicky academic, like the use of the word “technology” to refer to digital technologies alone. Others strike me as more serious, though.

Let’s take a look at this paragraph, listed under a “Roles and Responsibilities of Parents/Guardians” header:

The most expensive part of this round of strep throat is going to be the 40% of summer camp tuition that corresponds to the days kiddo won’t be attending.

Let’s be honest: I’d much rather be at my department’s writing retreat today (with free lunch, to boot!) and that my kid be going to (definitely not free) summer camp. All that said, I’m deeply grateful that a professor’s schedule is flexible enough that I can respond to a sick kid pretty easily.

Working on kiddo’s spice tolerance: “My mouth is like an oven, but in a calming way.”

Dear “Dad of the Year” jury, I submit to accompany my application these words that I pronounced after my kid asked to play in the backyard after having a whole park day at school: “Haven’t you played outside enough today? Let’s stay inside and play Switch instead.”

Spouse made the mistake of asking some innocent questions about Animorphs last night, and now kiddo is asking me whether worksheets or quizzes would be more pedagogically effective for the Animorphs Academy classes she’s planning for the weekend.

Today is the first day of that sacred season of “I’m done with school but kiddo isn’t yet,” so naturally, I am spending it with a kiddo home sick from school. 😅

For someone who is actively apathetic about professional and collegiate sports, I can get dangerously close to being that dad at kiddo’s soccer games.

Currently doing dishes while answering kiddo’s questions about Animorphs worldbuilding. Might be at my dad peak right now.

Finally got the rest of kiddo’s soccer schedule! Relieved that there’s no conflict with Eurovision 2024, because that would be a real dilemma for our family.

Kiddo’s been visiting grandparents since Sunday, and her books are still strewn about the living room, so time to admit I’m part of the problem here.

Kiddo is at my parents’ for her spring break and has discovered a box of my old Animorphs books. I’m excited to share yet another nerdy thing with her but also thinking about how surprisingly violent that series is for purported kids’ books.

Turns out that biking to and from soccer practice might be a bit too much to ask of kiddo in a single night. At least I got to chat kids and bikes with one of the other soccer dads.

“By the way, daddy, I don’t really have laser eyes. I just made that up as part of the game.”

Doing some quick math to compare how old I was when I first watched Star Wars to kiddo’s current age. Also hoping my parents haven’t tossed out the cassettes I got at that age in case I want to hunt down a VHS player and watch it that way.

“You’re not a dentist. You’re just my parent who occasionally checks my teeth.”

“Dad, what’s a… lunch-ee-on?” “A Luncheon? It’s an evolution of Eevee. Lunch-type Pokémon.” “Dad! No, it’s not!”

On one hand, doing replacing snow days with “non-traditional instruction” feels performative and inequitable, and I don’t think I like it. On the other, if kiddo isn’t going to have school tomorrow, I don’t necessarily mind her having things to keep her occupied while I do some work.

Two minutes into her first experience with a main-series Pokémon game, kiddo realized she could name her rival “Chicken,” so I’d say we’re off too a good start.

Update: Kiddo’s learning binary led to bedtime stories being partially replaced by a discussion on how number systems work, binary and hex, and how Daddy used to pass notes encoded in base 3 to his best friend in middle school.

I’ve been meaning to read (play?) this for months, ever since we bought it for kiddo after she recovered from being sick. Today, she’s sick again, so we went through it together.

This continues to be a great series by Shiga! I might like the first one more, but only slightly. The Beyond is surprisingly thinky for a kid’s book, has interesting puzzles, and there’s a hidden ending that I know exists but need to figure out. I hope Shiga has plans for more of these.

I love knowing that there’s a webcomic-to-children’s-book IP pipeline out there. Gives me some hope for humanity.

Kiddo’s awesome “advent calendar of magic” is prominently advertised as a STEM toy, and that’s been bugging me. Not because it isn’t true, but because things don’t need to be STEM to be valuable.

Spouse and I have been using French to talk about Christmas presents in front of kiddo. Tonight, I got to hear spouse refer to “monsters of the pocket” so that kiddo wouldn’t recognize “Pokémon” in the middle of an otherwise incomprehensible-to-her sentence.

“Just as I suspected, Daddy… You’ve been listening to We Will Rock You!”