Although we discourage it, my son still occasionally sucks his thumb. Today I asked him, "What's that in your mouth?" He looked at me, all wide eyed innocence, and said, "I'm cleaning my thumb."

My son told me he had a good dream last night. He dreamt he was in an iPod game and he unlocked my wife, my daughter and I in different levels.

Angry Birds? :)

LOL no. He does like Angry Birds but the game in his dream was about collecting bugs.

My six-year-old son asked for an ice cream sandwich. I said to wait until after lunch. He attempted to change my mind. "But Daddy, an ice cream sandwich is a sandwich, so it's lunch."

Oooh! A smart one, that.

As I used the new liquid soap bottle, I noticed the old one, which I had thought was empty, on the edge of the tub with about an inch of soap. I assumed my wife had watered down the dregs to use up the last of it. But later, I heard her shriek from the bathroom. I found her holding the now half-full bottle and lecturing our son, who was in the tub. Guess what is the same color as our soap…

So did she, uhh, try to USE it first, or did she just catch your son in the process of refilling?

I must say, that's a new one!

Fortunately, she caught him in the process of refilling. He was proud of his ingenuity, and surprised by our displeasure.

You should change your soap brand... ;-)

I was trying to get my son to eat his breakfast so I could dress him for kinder. He wandered off and came back wearing a long red blanket draped over his head and down his back. I said if he didn't sit down and eat his breakfast he couldn't play ipod or computer for the rest of the day. He said that's ok because he was Rapunzal and ipods and computers hadn't been invented yet.

We lit up the grill in the back yard. My wife asked my son what he wanted to eat. "A cheeseburger - but no ketchup, and no meat and no cheese." Then he picked up a hamburger bun and walked away.

We asked our daughter how she wanted her cake decorated for her ninth birthday party. She asked for a TARDIS cake. We couldn't justify the expense for it to be upright, but she still declared it the coolest cake ever:

I told my son it was time to turn out the light. I pointed out that he had yawned while claiming not to be tired. He replied, "But that wasn't my last one. I have a lot more yawns left. After them, I'll be tired."

The family was were getting ready to do some volunteer work. We explained to the children that we would be getting sweaty and dirty, so we would wait until afterward to shower. My nine-year-old daughter was aghast, "I can't leave without taking a shower!" I jokingly told her to use her mother's deodorant. I didn't realize that my six-year-old overheard until a few minutes later. "Do I put it on my face?"

"Do you put what on your face?"

"This," he said, holding up his mother's deodorant. "I rubbed it on my legs and belly, do I put it on my face, too?"

So, one of my sons is doing some "colouring" in the Toy Story app on my iPad. It was his first time, I might add.

He taps the Green button, does some scrawling, then looks at the end of his finger, clearly wondering why it wasn't stained green.

The look on his face was priceless. :-)

That is great. My kids aren't fazed by technology. They love what it does but aren't the least bit surprised by it.

On the other hand, they have a fondness for low-tech or old-fashioned things and eagerly embrace them - playing cards, dolls, marbles, jacks.

We visited friends from their school the other day, our first time at their house. Our kids were utterly enchanted by the rope swing in the back yard - a single thick knotted rope hanging from a large maple tree near the bottom of a slope. They hadn't tired of it after a couple of hours.

I told my daughter that I had one to swing across the creek behind the house where I lived for a couple of years when I was about six, so she asked me if I wanted a turn. The rope was about as thick as my wrist, hanging from a fork in the trunk thicker than my waist. I gave it a few test tugs, then, satisfied that it would support my weight, took a few steps uphill, envisioning one gentle swing out and back. I got as far as out.

I felt a little jolt, followed shortly by hard impact. I was unaware of an old repair to the rope where it looped around the tree. It failed. I fell about six feet, landing on by back, just between the shoulder blades.

My daughter laughed at the sound I made when I hit the ground, scolded me for spoiling her fun, then called me fat. I'm not, but try telling that to a nine-year-old holding a broken rope swing. Then my six-year-old son started to cry. Then my wife called me an idiot. I expect to relive this episode repeatedly come Thanksgiving, when the story will be entered into the the family canon, and I will give thanks for ibuprofen.

OK, but he is not 4 yet. :-)

Now need 2 more iPads and Survivor cases to prevent arguments and breakages. :-(

"I'm bored!" My daughter had been awake for under thirty seconds.

"What did you expect, jugglers?" my wife asked. "Eat breakfast and get ready for school."

The computer that my wife and kids share is on a desk in the living room. My wife forgot to log out of her user account when she left for work. How did I learn that she disabled requiring a password after sleep or screensaver? When I found that my six-year-old son had randomly chosen one of my wife's Skype contacts and typed "Hello. My mother is at work." The response was a concerned "What's wrong." He said that nothing was wrong. By this time I had realized what he was doing and quickly typed an embarrassed explanation and apology. Oh, and I re-enabled the password.