Updates

Dot writes:
Ken has long argued we should have more transparent category names on our blog. I was the one who dreamed up most of the fancy titles. We called our blog Ken and Dot’s Allsorts so I decided it would be fun to name all the categories after appropriate sweets or foods (‘Bun in [...]

Fame

Dot writes: I came across Kate’s blog of birth stories yesterday and sent her the links for ours. Blogosphere fame! I wish I’d come across this blog when I was pregnant, because it would have been very encouraging. Though what I was particularly looking for was stories about women giving birth happily in the Rotunda, [...]

Swot

Dot writes: a couple of weeks ago I got a letter inviting me to bring Prawn to Loughlinstown Health Centre on the 26th February (today) for a ‘developmental assessment’. Now, I am a worrier and also (alas) a pushy middle class mum in the making, and I have been fretting slightly at Prawn’s reluctance to [...]

Can fish count?

Ken writes:
There is a story in the Guardian today reporting a study that allegedly shows that certain fish can count to four. My normal first reaction to this sort of wildly implausible claim is that the journalists have gotten the details wrong, but this time they quote a researcher apparently making that wildly implausible [...]

Run

Dot writes: I am feeling faintly smug, also faintly stiff, because yesterday morning I handed Prawn to Ken and went for a run. It was only a short run round the block, but it felt amazingly good. Strange how some muscle aches are horrible and some are almost pleasant. I think the key is symmetry; [...]

Chub off the old block

Dot writes: Mum keeps remarking on how strongly Hugh resembles me as a baby. Here’s some evidence.
Mummy
Prawn
I went to a party yesterday with two of the yoga mums who had babies within a couple of weeks of me. It’s always a shock to see quite how big and how roly-poly plump Hugh is compared to [...]

Sleep

Dot writes: Prawn is asleep. He is a binge sleeper, a bulimic sleeper. For days he stays off the sleep wagon – indeed, yesterday he largely resisted the soporific powers of his buggy – and then comes a day like today when he behaves as though my milk contains tamazepam. He is on his third [...]

Ssssugar and shivers

ken writes:
There’s a story in the New Zealand Herald today reporting a sacked academic’s attempt to get his job back. He totally has my sympathy. It seems he wrote an intemperate email while obviously under stress and suffering from intestinal problems, and was sacked by the University of Auckland. The story quotes the offensive email, [...]

Predicament

Dot writes: on Monday I encountered one of those unforseen parenting problems that occasionally creep up on one. I’d walked to Dalkey with Prawn in the pram – I needed exercise and he had exhausted the entertainment possibilities of his playmat, the flat and his mother – and stopped in at IdleWilde cafe for a [...]

What is philosophy?

Ken writes: Our friend Chris Cowley will be speaking next weekend at the Irish Philosophical Club meeting in Ballymascanlon (near Dundalk in County Louth). I’ve been thinking about his chosen topic since he discussed it with me at the end of January.
By etymology, ‘philosophy’ means love of wisdom, and I think Chris’s talk will be [...]