Yeah, it really is about the kids.

Bear with me here.  And try not to jump ahead. ... that Daniel. He used to love  brushing his teeth.  Then something happened.  We have no idea what it was but now we are living in the world of a full-on tantrum nearly every morning and night when it's time to brush our teeth. The night before last we had wrangled everyone off their beds after fighting the inevitable – and inexplicable – fights and reading a bounty of stories I bet would be the envy of a lot of kids out there.  All seemed good. The next morning I was getting dressed and concluded that I might wear a belt for a change.  So I went to the as-yet-nearly-unused drawer under my side of the bed to fetch one of the belts I've collected over the years. By now I'm sure everyone's already connected "A" and "B" in this story, so I'll jump right to it. This seems to be Daniel's latest solution to the tooth-brushing problem.  We can't brush his teeth if we can't f...

For Christmas this year Mamoo gave Christine (and, as we'll see in a minute, the boys) a bird-feeder.  We used to have one in our old place and I liked it, but not long before we moved it suffered a catastrophic failure and it made a rapid descent two stories to the concrete patio below.  The patio was fine. Last week I picked up a 91" shepherd's hook that had a lot of positive reviews around the subject of using it as a bird-feeder hanging device.  It arrived on Thursday and yesterday I enlisted James and Daniel's assistance in setting up the hook and feeder.  James and I went out first thing in the morning and picked out the food we would put in it.  James only wanted to pick food that had pictures of cardinals on the front, which was fine with me because I want to attract cardinals again, we used to have a couple in our backyard but I didn't see them last year; plenty in the neighbourhood, though.  Anyway, we got back, both boys helped me set it up and...