Just a regular Sunday here. Little Matt and I had our regular pancake and Hotwheels breakfast. Our weekly treat is to go to McDonald’s for pancakes and then if he’s been good we go to Target or Toys-R-Us and get a Hotwheel car. Lately he’s been more into Legos though.

I just uploaded a few new baby pictures for this week. Nothing too exciting happening here. Maggie Belle is sitting up and wiggling around a lot, but still not very mobile. And she’s still a pretty quiet baby overall. She doesn’t cry too much, just a little bit when she’s trying to tell us that she’s hungry. That’s all. This week’s pictures are at: March 30, 2008.

So last night, Little Matt is upstairs, supposedly getting ready for bath time, when we hear a big crash followed by the extremely loud wailing of a five-year-old. He had pulled out the drawers of his dresser in a nice stair-step manner so he could climb up to the top. Of course this didn’t work and he pulled it over on himself. We’re lucky that he only managed to scratch one finger and one toe, but as he knew he was in trouble, the crying was really something to behold. I’m sure he was scared, and he should have been because he could have really gotten hurt, but in the end he was fine. Maybe he figured if he cried hard enough, he would get the sympathy vote from us and we would forget that he was climbing up his dresser. I would have probably tried the same thing at his age.

Maggie Belle had her six-month doctor’s appointment this week. I think she’s about 2′3″ tall now. Of course, she isn’t standing so the doctor calls her 27 inches long. Which is about right as she’s much longer than she is tall. But she’s only 18 pounds! I weighed her on our shipping scales at work a couple of weeks ago and she was tipping the scales at a healthy 19. I guess she’s starting to thin up a bit.

The toy industry is a multi-billion dollar market and consumers often find themselves bombarded with the latest and greatest toys from the major players in the industry. While I have never had anything against toy cars or dolls, and in fact my children have plenty of both, I am always on the quest to provide something a bit more educational for them. What I am about to write on comes partly from practical experience (buying and playing with toys with my own children), and partly from my experience as a former scientist and from being in the toy industry myself for a while.

There are many questions to consider when choosing science kits and educational toys for your children. Also, we have to keep in mind that what may be a great learning toy for one child may not be as worthwhile for another. Every child is different and learns at their own capacity and through their own best mechanisms. That being said, the following are some things for parents to consider when deciding what the best toys are for their children. (more…)

Okay, so it’s been a couple weeks since I registered this site and I just now got finished putting up the first couple of photo albums. Take a look at what I’ve posted so far. On this template there should be a “Photo Albums” link in the upper right of the page.

Here it is… the first post on Maggie Belle’s own domain. I can’t promise to update this all the time, but I do hope to mark and record any memorable events as they happen. My initial plans are to update this site at least weekly, even if there’s nothing much new to report. We’ll see how that goes.