The only constant is change.
Kids
Nell and I wrote a children’s book today
Jan 15th
I picked up Penultimate for iPad, which is really nice, and a Boxwave stylus. It’s a neat app for drawing and note-taking, and I expect it to come in handy at work.
But today is not a work day. So I showed my new toys to my daughter Nell, and she decided that we should take turns drawing. Then she decided what we were doing was a children’s book and that it was about adjectives.
I’ve decided to self-publish on the Internet. Check it out.
Learning to ride a bike, not metaphorically
Sep 12th
My friend Sara Asche Anderson (@sjaa) posted this:
I need tips on helping my 5yo learn to ride his bike without training wheels. Additionally, how do I get him to trust my advice?
Which reminded me of a story, and it’s longer than 140 characters.
When my son Alex was five or six, he wanted to take the training wheels off his bike, and my (lovely and talented) wife Christina obliged and then spent two hours chasing him down the street holding onto the seat.
She came back into the house sweaty and tired and said “Another couple of days of that and he should be ready to go.”
I looked out the back window to see Alex in the cul-de-sac behind us, riding in circles with the neighbor kid, and said “I don’t think it’s going to take that long.”
I like to imagine that I then took a sip of my bourbon and coke, because that’s the kind of thing that goes with wry, sophisticated humor, but I suspect I’m embellishing.
The secret, which we learned a year or so later when Alex passed it along to his sister Nell, is that you don’t hold the seat. What Matt (the neighbor kid) was doing was simply giving them a shove to start. Kids already know how to pedal, and as long as you don’t stop, you don’t fall.
#protip: You can raise the training wheels so that only one is on the ground at a time – this will encourage the kid to ride fast enough to balance on the main wheel, as riding with one training wheel on the ground will have them going in circles. A week or two of that, assuming moderate bike usage, should be enough to get them used to balancing.
So, in answer to Sara:
To learn to ride a bike, assuming the kid is already capable of maintaining a reasonable speed on a bike, push them. And hold them if they fall. Keep bandaids handy, and advise the wearing of jeans and a helmet.
Getting your kids to trust your advice – let me know if you find out. I’m still working on it.
Have I mentioned that I’m proud of my kids?
Jun 17th
I am.
My daughter Nell is a geek, just like her dad. She went to w00tstock with me and thoroughly enjoyed it, although a fair number of the jokes were over her head. And when I set up the Neuros LINK earlier this week, she was fascinated and wanted to see what kinds of digital media it can get from the Internet. She’s reading voraciously, and is the kind of kid who hears the word “voraciously” and wants to know what it means and then uses it (correctly) in a sentence three days later.
My son Alex is having an excellent summer playing baseball. His team, the Maplewood Ironbirds, is undefeated through 6 games. He’s pitched four times, 3 starts and one relief appearance. He’s retired 20 batters, 19 on strikeouts, while walking just 5 and has yet to give up a hit. He’s also hitting well – on Tuesday, after pitching in the top of the inning (3 up, 3 down on strikeouts), he then led off the game with a triple.
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