Yesterday was N's half-birthday. He's now 8 1/2, even though he thinks half-birthdays are silly and didn't make any fuss about it. To celebrate M and A went to Safeway and bought him black and white cookies. In other exciting…

Uncle Jonathan and I did some tandem cooking tonight: we both made the same recipe for dinner from the weekly New York Times recipe newsletter. On Sunday, he told us he makes 4 of the 5 recipes every week, so…

Well, it's been a long couple of days. But better now. The girls are hard at work on lots of end-of-semester assignments. N played a lot of baseball this weekend, with Daddy yesterday and with Alex here today. He's also…

I assembled N's breakfast this AM and asked him which fruit he'd like to have. He said,"There is a perfect looking banana over there." So I opened it and sliced it and made it into a smiley face. He said,…