Les Bonnes Choses

This one's mostly a core dump. I edited it so that it didn't come off as a 'my child is better than yours' kind of post. I mean, he is, but rubbing it in is just poor sportsmanship. Yes, child rearing is a sport. See you in London, 2012.

We recently contacted the Gentner lab (note: if you google "dedre", Gentner is google's #1 suggested completion - she must be like Madonna or something). Some consent forms appeared in Jude's mailbox at the preschool. I like her work, and figured that, rather than have Jude get pulled out of class at school, maybe he could participate on campus. I did hint that he's kind of a weirdo, however, and therefore might be a bit of an outlier:

Some time in his second year, I helped him gain the concept of 'toe fluff' (the lint appearing between your toes when you remove your socks). It concerns him. He can often be found before a bath using a Q-tip to meticulously clean between his toes because he finds toe fluff in his bath water distressing.

Like most kids his age, I'm sure, he's always asking "why?". Being a science geek, I can and do tell him the correct answer. So now he's got some ideas in his head about the vestibular system, and can explain that soap kills germs by destroying the phospholipid bilayer (and thus, all soap is antibacterial).

I have no idea how any of this might apply to his analogical reasoning, but he should come with fine print: "results not typical".

Sorry, Dedre.