Milestone Minutiae

I showed the kids some Tom Lehrer videos today - they were lots of fun. In particular, they enjoyed "New Math." Not only were they completely able to understand the math while it was going on (in base 10 and base 8), when he explained how they "used to do it," Emmett said, "What's going on when they are taking three from two and then carrying the one? Wait - that's like clock math but with 10, right?" (clock math = modular arithmetic) Looks to me like the "new math" (when defined as "understanding how numbers work") is working out just fine.

Henry first noticed his tooth was loose (left lower incisor) at Disneyland last week. Fortunately, it didn't bother him too much - he quickly mastered tearing chunks off of food or biting with the side of his mouth. Today when we got home from skiing, he told me his tooth was gone! It fell out in the car, and he doesn't know where it is. It seems to have broken loose when he was eating an Oreo, but he swears he didn't swallow it. About 10 minutes later, Henry came back to me and urgently said, "Mom, there is oreo on my tooth. So if you find a tooth with oreo on it in the car, that is probably my tooth." (I hope we don't find anyone else's tooth in our car!)