The holidays in pictures

  Ben carefully places an egg on the Seder plate on the first night of Passover.  We didn't have a real shank bone, so that's a cut-out of a picture that Neil found online.

 

On other nights, we do not dip even once. But on this night, we dip many, many, many times. Apparently, dipping gnocchi in salt water is our new Seder tradition.

On the second night of Passover, we had friends over for a Seder (hence the good tablecloth, and the kids table in the background).  Here's Ben chomping into a lemon-shaped candy.

In his Easter basket, Ben got a new magnifying glass and some more rocks for his rock collection.  Yes, this is the kind of nerdly family we are.  Ben seems to fit right in.

As if that weren't enough, he also got a set of tangrams.  Oh, yeah, and a chocolate rabbit and lots of other candy of a traditional Easter nature.  We're math geeks, but we also like our chocolate.

We went over to Jackson's house for a wonderful Easter egg hunt and Easter dinner.  I don't have any pictures of that yet.

More from our budding philosopher

This will take a bit of explanation.

Ben has a large collection of small toy cars, and most of these have real wheels that turn on axles.  Y'know -- Matchbox and things of that ilk or a little bigger.  He also has a set of "squirties" -- those soft plastic bath toys with a little hole somewhere so you can fill them with water and then squirt your child silly.  Many of these are in the shape of vehicles -- car, firetruck, submarine (of course), etc.  These do not have real wheels, so Ben refers to these as "fake" cars.  We usually keep them in the bin with the rest of the cars, because, frankly, we don't like using them in the bath -- it's hard to get all the water out of them, and we aren't fans of mildew.

So last night he was playing with his wide assortment of vehicles, and he declared "This is a real person who likes to play with fake things."

He just needs a beard with bits of food in it*

Today Ben's daycare was closed for staff meetings, so after preschool Ben got to sit in on one of Neil's office hours.  Neil was giving an exam in his logic class later in the day, so he had plenty of anxious customers.  As if their pre-test anxiety wasn't high enough already, Neil taught Ben to say to them, "Your statement is the negation of a tautology."

For logicians, them's fightin' words.  Seriously, if a logician ever says that to you, consider yourself served.

It was pretty cute.

Later, we all had lunch together over in the Math Department, where Ben and one of my colleagues (a fellow John Denver fan) gave us a rousing concert.

*If this title makes no sense to you, it's because you know relatively few professional logicians.  Count your blessings.  My father once threatened to disown me if I became a logician.  I think he was joking, but I've never been completely sure.

School pic

Here's a cute picture of Ben in his speech therapy session this morning.  The director of the preschool sent it to me.