In further proof that stereotypical plots in children’s media often have some truth to them, kiddo was dreading going to summer camp this morning but wished this afternoon that she didn’t have to leave.

Grateful to have a spouse who thinks I like ginger way more than a person should but still buys dark chocolate ginger cookies because she knows I’ll like them. She and kiddo tried them, but I’m the only one who appreciates the burn.

Kiddo: “I just want to teach cavemen to make pepperoni pizza.”

Big family bike ride today, and spouse and I were trying to figure out why kiddo was struggling so much on a mostly flat rail trail. Get back and learn that her brake pads were broken and slowing her rear tire the whole time.

I work hard not to be a sitcom dad, but it just occurred to me that after spouse left for airport, we’ve basically done nothing but order pizza and play video games, so…

Kiddo, just now: “Are Pokémon even marsupials?”

I was a big fan of Homestar Runner in the early-to-mid 2000s, but I’m still baffled by how into it kiddo has gotten over the past few months.

When I was kiddo’s age, Pokémon didn’t exist yet, so there’s something that breaks my brain about her current enthusiasm for the franchise.

Kiddo last night: “please let me sleep in on Saturday!” Kiddo this morning: wakes up earlier than she does on a school day.

I don’t know what it is about particular volumes of this series that makes them rise above the rest, but this was one of them. Maybe it was adorable Ghüs becoming a badass when needed or a father-daughter reunion or something else. Whatever it was, this series continues to deliver.

Kiddo has EXTREMELY low standards for a pronouncement of “Best Daddy Ever,” but I’m grateful for it nonetheless.

Kiddo is excited to be signed up for soccer, so we’ve spent time kicking her new ball around the past two nights. I’m surprised by how much is coming back to me, given that I haven’t played in ~15 years and that I’ve never been good.

Kiddo is complicating our errand to buy her soccer stuff by insisting on hugging all the mannequins in the sports store.

One of our newest family traditions is kiddo watching a Homestar Runner video during her bedtime snack while I do some dishes and see how many of the lines I still remember verbatim.

One of kiddo’s library books right now is part comic and part choose your own adventure, all wrapped up in a solo TTRPG adventure. It’s a bit too old for her, but we’re both loving it.

Jon Sciezka and Julia Rothman’s “The Real Dada Mother Goose” is a real delight. It’s not often that kiddo checks out books that are homages to Dada, Oulipo, and other things I studied as a French major.

My sister-in-law recently gifted me a copy of R. Sikoryak’s weird but wonderful comic Terms and Conditions, which “adapts” the 2015 iTunes terms and conditions into a comic format. I was as delighted by the gift, which I’m sure only contributed to her bewilderment (she knew I wanted the book, but I can’t blame anyone for not understanding why I wanted it).

One of the gags of the comic is, obviously, the idea that a comic adaptation would get you to actually read through the whole document instead of just pretending that you have. The other gag—and one that breaks up the monotony of reading through the document—is that each page is an homage to a famous work of comic art, but with Steve Jobs inserted in the place of one of the characters. My favorite is one that I’ve shared in a previous post about the book, a shout-out to Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns:

The pure joy kiddo showed when getting her first library card was exactly what I needed just now.

I have never needed to write a recursive function in any of my (admittedly quite limited) professional programming, but when messing with kiddo’s robot today, I remembered the concept from a Java class in college and pulled it off in block programming. Pretty happy with that.

Today, kiddo is rediscovering her set of Story Cubes. I had forgotten her insistence that the comedy and tragedy masks on one cube face are actually Grey-style aliens.

I’ve mentioned before that I support the Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land podcast on Patreon, one of the perks of which is that I get access to the Tribune’s Mormon coverage without having to subscribe to the whole paper (which would be a lot of money for someone who doesn’t care about Jazz coverage or Utah politics).

Thanks to this Patreon perk, I read a lot of news about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and between that and over three decades that I spent as an active member of that church, you’d think that nothing would surprise me anymore. Yet, I was still taken aback by an article that showed up in my email inbox last night: Latter-day Saints alter a Nativity painting to make Mary more modest.

Kiddo’s uncle is teaching her the Pokémon TCG, which is pretty delightful.

I am skeptical about heavy emphasis on STEM as educational policy, but watching my kid learn to program with her new robot today was a real treat.

Skipping my congregation’s candelight service today. Can’t go in person because of family sickness, and they’ve made it clear that they aren’t going to make huge efforts to make it Zoom accessible. Bummed to miss it, but playing Mario Party with kiddo instead is pretty fun.

In the Greenhalgh home, Mommy’s been sick for over a week, which means Daddy’s not gotten a lot of work done recently. Final grades are due tomorrow, though, so kiddo might get a lot of screen time today.