Really Good Quotes

Flu Treatment
[Thanks Sied]

Vicki was still feeling a bit weak and not up to par after her recent bout with the flu and went to see her doctor. After a quick examination, he said, “You look weak and exhausted! What have you been doing? Are you getting out in the fresh air, getting enough exercise, and having your meals 3 times a day, as I advised on your last visit?”

Vicki, looked up, a bit surprised and exclaimed, “Oh doc, I’ve sure been getting the first two, but on that last one, I woulda swore you said three males a day!

Truly Great Moments In Sports

Kirsten was sick today.  Hopefully she’ll be back Wednesday.  Here’s an archive article.

Email Kirsten

"Humor helps us to think out of the box. The average child laughs about 400 times per day, the average adult laughs only 15 times per day. What happened to the other 385 laughs?"
~ Unknown ~

My son James, who is all of three years old, is very knowledgeable about the world of transportation. He knows, for instance, that Thomas the Train can go faster than The Troublesome Trucks. He knows that red cars go faster than cars of other colours, and about two weeks ago he informed me that the rocket is going to the moon and the plane is going to China. He also knows that the little blue car with his name written on it is his, and that he has to tuck it in every night so it can sleep, otherwise it will get tired.

In other words, James is a typical, energetic, playful three-year-old. He is enormous fun to be around. We are seeing his personality develop, we are seeing the wonder in his face as he discovers new things, and almost every day he says something that prompts us to ask, "Where did he learn that?" As much as he is learning and growing, though, he is still my baby. I’d like to keep him this age for a while.

But alas, I cannot do that. This fact was brought home to me very strongly recently, when my husband and I discussed the question of school. Because kids in Ontario are registered in Junior Kindergarten the year they turn four, this is the year for James. We have had very mixed feelings about this, simply because James is still so young. His birthday, being on Christmas Day, falls six days before the cut-off. He is probably going to be the youngest and smallest kid in his class.

My husband and I floundered on this issue. Would starting out as the youngest and smallest kid in the class put James at an instant disadvantage? Or would we be better off waiting for a year and enrolling James with next year’s Junior Kindergarten contingent, making him the oldest in his class? We did what we always do when faced by a tough parenting question - we did research and spoke to people who might be able to shed some light.

One fact that is supported by several research studies is that a very high percentage of top hockey players in North America have birthdays in January, February and March. When you think about it, this makes sense. Hockey is a game that, to me at least, seems to rely a great deal on physical size and strength. Since the cut-off for most junior hockey leagues is January 1st, it stands to reason that the kids with birthdays early in the year are bigger and stronger than kids born later in the year. We can make our peace with this, though. So James may be statistically less likely to be a hockey player. There are plenty of other sports he can be involved in, which don’t involve high-speed skating and the need to wear helmets for survival.

We were more concerned about an article we found pointing out that kids with birthdays right before the cut-off date are developmentally behind kids born at the beginning of the year by practically a year. Meaning that James will be a year smaller, and a year less advanced than kids born in January. This raises questions about the potential for social and cognitive performance. If we enrolled James this year, would we be dooming him to a lifetime of academic under-achievement? Would we be making him a target of bigger kids who wanted someone to pick on? Would we be helping or hindering him in his role of brother to a special needs child?

Once we had done all the research we could, we spoke to the person who would ultimately decide the issue for us. I am very fortunate to have a brother-in-law who is a Vice-Principal in the school board. When we were enrolling my older son in school, my brother-in-law was instrumental in finding us a fantastic special education program in a nearby school. When we spoke to him about James, he told us that while the research does correctly point out that there are developmental differences between kids born eleven months apart, the range of abilities in kid that age is so great that it really doesn’t matter. He also said that any age-related differences tend to even out by the time the kid reach third grade.

After a lengthy discussion with my brother-in-law, in which we were reminded that a Junior Kindergartner isn’t exactly going to be expected to read Shakespeare or do advanced Calculus, we decided that enrolling James now would be the best thing for him. He’s a pretty social kid and he seems to be reasonably intelligent, so I’m sure he’ll hold his own.

James will be fine. The only question now is whether I am ready to be the mother of two school-going children. I guess we’re never really ready.

Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten

Comment On This Article

Uses For Coffee Filters
[Thanks Deborah]

Use them to strain soup stock and to tie fresh herbs in to put in soups and stews.

Re: Stinky Flyer

Mike, you asked, "Is this a case of the rights of the majority overriding the rights of the individual?" Your right to smell like a dog that just rolled in dead fish on the beach ends when it inflicts on my right to breath fresh air! An airplane is a confined space, and when one person is inflicting their stench on the whole plane’s occupants, then yes, the airline has a right - perhaps a mandate - to remove that person. And hey, since when did the rights of one person override the majority? Maybe politically, you believe that assertion (ok, to be precise, that question), but when it comes to people paying for transportation, I think the majority need to rule. - Ohiokat




Re: Eating Smarties

Wow. What a weird way to eat Smarties. You are doing it totally wrong. When eating M&Ms, for example, I group by color in vertical lines with the largest number on the right down to the smallest number on the left. I then begin by eating one of the color with the largest number, and continue until it is even with the next largest number. Then I alternate, until they are even with the color of the third largest quantity. I proceed in this fashion until I have one of each color remaining. That is the only way that makes sense. *grin* By the way… do you allow your food to touch when you are eating? - Tammy (OCD) in Alabama



iT is funny because i am this way with three. IF i have more than three left i eat the others so that i end up with three left and then i eat the three. But it has to be three .I wonder why? There has always got to be three in my hand. - dEE



Kirsten, I never thought about it but I always sort by color then eat the color with the fewest first. I always eat all of the ones of the same color too. Never splitting them up. There is probably some psychology study in this. I wonder if we can get government funding?? - Mike



Re: Animal Antics

Hi Cliff, I have a golden retriever who made an entrance into the house right through the screen door and since the screen laid back against the frame and didn’t look like it was busted, we just left it like that so she can come and go at will. The trouble came when I walked into my living room one day and found a cat sitting in the picture window. She apparently watched the dog and just followed her into the house. After that, I started calling her fog (from the poem that has some thing about, "the fog comes in on little cat feet") and she would visit whenever the mood struck her. However, we had a parting of the ways when I caught her running across my yard with a robin in her mouth. In a fit of anger, I screamed at her to let it go so loudly that she actually did let it go. It was dazed, but did manage to fly away! Fog was kind of scarce after that! - Mare in Mare-land



How many animal antics have I witnessed? Let me count the ways! A pair of bird stories :

A few summers ago I had quite a nice display of tall, strong Cosmos plants waving their floral glory in a light breeze. Along came a bunch of Goldfinches. Each bird tried to land on a flower, which bent, flipping the birds who fluttered wings and righted themselves and went right back to their attempts to snag seed from the centers of the flowers. It was better than an acrobatic circus show to watch.

But the antic I saw a hen do one afternoon completely wiped me out. Some years ago our family lived on a small farm. We had one Morgan horse, one good sized dog, and a couple hens. (The cat doesn’t figure in this tale.) One of the hens lost a foot and we called her Pegleg. She had become very friendly with the horse, hopping over from the hen roost to the stall every morning. The horse dropped bits of oats from her feed bucket to the floor so Pegleg could share a bit of breakfast. Now the dog was not a hunter at all. He showed little interest in doing anything more than teasing the hens.But they were always a little wary of him. One afternoon while the horse was grazing in the pasture, Pegleg was pecking away near the barn at whatever hens find when they free range, and the dog decided to chase her. She looked up suddenly, and took off running as fast as her legs would take her straight to the horse. She came to a sliding halt directly under the horse’s belly, stopped dead and stood there, staring at the dog, who extended front paws to brake his progress in the direction of the horse. The Horse merely raised her head and LOOKED at the dog. The whole show was straight out of a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon. It took me a few seconds to realize all the deductive reasoning I had just witnessed. Pegleg KNEW the horse would protect her. Chicken and Dog both knew Horse could kick him. And they say chickens are stupid. - Nancy L in Ohio



When I was young, I lived for a time in Vancouver, and my friends and I usually went to the park in the wee hours of the morning. On the way, we were joined for several nights running by a housecat who took a liking to us, only returning home when we did, to sleep all day for some unsuspecting owner. One night, on the way to the park, the cat started showing off by hiding, then racing past us to climb a tree and look down on us as we walked by. When it really got funny, though, she picked a steel lamp post instead of a tree, and got about head-high before her claws slid slowly down. After we quit laughing, we had to apologize at length before she would hang with us again.

I always thought a skitty kitty must have met a nasty person, but now I know one who has never let anyone but his "owner" get close. He was an only kitten, and lives with his mom in a remote cabin. Normally, he requires door service, as is proper for Egyptian Royalty, but heads out the cat flap like a shot when anyone else visits. - Bob of the North



Re: Tim

Tim, I don’t know if you will get this message but if you do, I want you to rethink your decision to leave the RGQ staff. I’ve watched your column for years and seen it change from objective to subjective. You turned a creative release into an additional job. When you became an advisor, you were right back at work. Think about it, Tim. You had the most fun when you wrote about your nutsy day. Come back.
AuntieNana
[I second that!  Tim come back, we need you.]