Friday Four

1. My four-year-old daughter has been eager to help me with chores lately. A couple of weekends ago, she helped me fold clothes, and she has remained interested in learning how to cook.

My son, now two, has amazed me with the number of words he clearly knows the meanings of. His pronunciation is a little behind that, but he is quite good at getting his point across. I would swear he sometimes uses complete sentences, too, although his words run together. A few days ago, he said something that I am pretty sure was, "I want to get that down." It all sounded like one long word, but I knew what he wanted, and couldn't help but smile when he reached up for a refrigerator magnet. A week or so before that, I saw him stumble and asked, "Are you okay?" He replied with a mashed-together sounding, "I'm okay."

Little Man has had a strong sense of order for a long time. A couple of recent instances reminded me of how he used to line up his Disney figurines every morning. Wednesday morning, ahead of a car trip, he pointed out that Pumpkin's drink holder was empty. (She told me she didn't want anything after I showed her the drink and asked.) Also, after so many mornings of my holding him to help him sleep and working by the light of an LED lamp, he expects it to be on when I have him downstairs and haven't put my things away. He marches right over and turns it on.

2. Yuck! Unclutterer discussed a pizza cone maker set last week in its amusing "Unitasker Wednesday" series. Even more amusing to me was the title of its next entry: "You Don't Need to Finish Everything You Begin." For their sakes, I hope that's a coincidence!

3. Well, at least this guy's prospective client made it easy to make up his mind:

I will put down a $20 deposit. You will submit your work to me by 3PM on these specific dates, and if I am not satisfied with your work by the 30th, I will rescind my deposit and find another designer for my logo. If I want to contact you about this at midnight, you must be available to communicate with me. This is because you only have a week to work on this, as my cousin took a year to create the last logo and I was unsatisfied. We need this now. If I am satisfied with the logo, I will pay you the remaining $20.

The first commenter came up with about the right response, I think.

4. This is a great list: "Life Lessons From Differential Equations." There is even inspiration to be found in the last: "You can sometimes do what sounds impossible by reframing your problem." [Link to math lesson omitted.]

-- CAV