I’m so mad, I can’t concentrate at work. This morning, while I was dropping the kids off at daycare, I saw a little boy in their class walk over to Eleanor and start strangling her with both hands around her neck. I yelled out, “HEY! HEY!” and one of the teachers picked up the little boy, moved him about ten feet away, and admonished him sternly. He didn’t appear fazed at all though. Now, I have always said that I’m against corporal punishment, but in this case, I don’t think anything but a spanking would have gotten through to this kid. What I really wanted to do was pick him up and give him several good whacks with a wooden paddle (a la Principal Thomas at Westwood Elementary School). In fact, I had to just stand there frozen, in order to control myself.

This little boy is younger than the twins, so really, his “strangling” wasn’t very effective, but like most of the other kids in the class he’s a lot bigger than Eleanor and Miranda. That’s the problem when your kids are “petite”, they get picked on. I know this isn’t the right response, but I almost want to encourage my kids to bite and scratch other kids in the face if they’re provoked. I’m already planning tae kwon do or jiu jitsu classes for them in a couple years.

We started saving for college on September 21, 2005, and since it’s been a little over a year, it’s worth assessing our progress. Agnes and I haven’t talked about an exact amount that we’re targeting for college savings, but we can come up with a preliminary target if we look at projections for tuition, room, and board for the year that our kids enter college, multiply it by two, and decide what percentage of the total we would like to have when the kids enter college. I don’t know if 50% is the right percentage, but it seems like a reasonable place to start.

Assuming the above calculations give us a target savings amount, here’s where we stand:

• We’ve saved 2.4% of our target and used 5.6% of our time.
• In the past year, we had an 8.5% gain on our principal as compared to a 10% gain that the S&P 500 enjoyed during the same period.

It’s probably okay that we’ve saved only 2.4% so far. Savings tend to grow more quickly during the later stages due to the effects of compounding on past gains.

It’s not great that we were beat out by the S&P 500, but I’m not that concerned either. We have a good mix to our investments, which I think will help us ride out some of the bumps we would face if we were invested solely in an index fund that mimics the S&P 500. The S&P 500 is dominated by large-cap stocks, and even though we don’t need the money for another seventeen years, I think it’s good to still diversify beyond what the S&P 500 provides.

That being said, with our current contribution rate, we need to average about a 12% gain each year to meet our goals. That’s probably unrealistic. Alternately, if we expect to average an 8% gain each year, we’re going to need to bump up our yearly contributions by $1,000 for each of them.

For now, I don’t think we’re going to make any drastic changes. We may try contributing a little more over the next year, but I don’t see the need to change what we’re investing in. We’ll let it go another year and assess where we are again before we make any changes. Our investments have drifted a little bit from our original allocation, but that’s easy enough to rebalance. We’ll see where we stand next year.

For a while now, Eleanor has been swaying to music. Miranda picked it up a little later, and they’ll both dance when they hear music they like. Recently, Eleanor has been adding an extra wiggle when the music is faster. My mom bought the girls a toy in the shape of a barn that teaches the girls about different kinds of animals. When you press the button on the top, it plays banjo music. Eleanor likes to hold the toy and press the button to move through the different songs until she finds one that she likes. We’ll hear Oh, Susannah and Skip to My Lou.

[If you can’t see the Flash player above, you can download the video in XviD format: XviD (1.39 MB).]

I like that Miranda is swaying to the first song at the same time, even though she’s busy looking at her book.

Yes, only someone with a pediatrician as a mom would have a bowel regimen. Poor Miranda. She’s been severely constipated, and has had blood in her stool at least twice from all the straining. This developed after switching from formula to cow’s milk, and eating a lot of homemade food. It’s possible that the food I’m making is dense, and while it’s causing her to gain weight, the lack of water is making her constipated as well.

This morning, I gave her a bottle of formula instead of cow’s milk since I think cow’s milk is primarily the culprit, but she can’t be on formula forever, so I had to come up with another solution. Thus, the bowel regimen:

1. Fruit at least three times a day
2. 5 ml of mineral oil in the morning
3. 1/2 teaspoon of benefiber twice a day (this stuff is great because it completely dissolves in liquid and soft foods, and it has no flavor)
4. Try to give more liquids. (but not too much since we don’t want to fill her stomach up so that she doesn’t eat)
5. No more cheese crackers and other snacks with no fiber–switch to graham crackers and fig newtons

We’ll see if all this helps.

Here’s Miranda eating prunes, which she actually likes. Go fiber!

On Tuesday when we picked up our kids from daycare, we got three reports. The first one was for Eleanor at 8:50AM:

Eleanor was really upset when the other child refused to give up the toy that the other child was playing with. Eleanor bit the other child.

It goes on to say:

I talked to Eleanor about biting friends and removed her from the area. She is going to be shadowed by a teacher at all times.

The next report was for Eleanor at 9:00AM (only ten minutes later):

Eleanor and the other child were playing and Eleanor wanted the other child’s toy and the other child refused to give Eleanor the toy. Eleanor bit the other child.

Again, she was removed from the area, and we assume she was more closely shadowed.

The final report was for Miranda at 11:50AM:

Miranda was tired and Ms. Maria was getting her bottle ready when the child crawled next to her and she bit her friend.

Okay. What in the heck is going on? These are the only bite reports we’ve ever received and suddenly we get three in one day! Eleanor seemed to have some provocation for her two incidents, but in Miranda’s case, the other child was just crawling nearby. We weren’t told who the victims were, but it was pretty clear who at least one of them was when all the parents showed up to pick up their kids. This girl is relatively new to the class and smaller than Eleanor and Miranda.

I’m guessing this must be some kind of cycle of aggression that forms in daycare–Miranda was first bitten back in June for blocking another child, and I guess she subsequently learned to bite when frustrated. I don’t blame our specific daycare though, because I know of two other kids in completely different daycare programs who learned to bite other kids once they started daycare. I just wish there wasn’t as much of a Lord of the Flies thing going on.

We’ve been telling our kids “No!” in a firm voice whenever we get a hint of this behavior, but we need to redouble our efforts. I think it will also help to specifically say “No biting!” and to move the aggressor away. Fortunately, at this age, I think they can tell when we say they’ve done something wrong.

Here’s a picture of Eleanor showing her teeth. To be clear, she is not attempting to bite anyone in this picture.

Eleanor and Miranda recently turned thirteen months old and I’m later than usual in posting their thirteen-month photos. In this month’s photos, we have a few more pictures from Albert and Erin visiting to celebrate their birthday (and go to a wedding) and from their birthday party.

Since last month, Eleanor added one more tooth for a total of five. Miranda is still going strong with her four teeth. We added Miranda’s nighttime bottle back into the rotation, but we’ve pretty much cut out formula altogether. All of the bottles contain only whole milk. Miranda has been doing great with the solids and finger foods, and while we had some concern about her low weight a month ago, she’s been doing much better. Eleanor still doesn’t like chunks in her food unless it’s finger food, and there seems to be only a few finger foods she’s willing to eat. We’re still monitoring her weight to make sure she’s taking in enough calories.

Eleanor and Miranda are both throwing a ball now. Eleanor also will make an “uh-oh” sound whenever she drops something. Miranda likes to open books and make whole strings of syllables as if she’s reading the book. She’ll turn the page and continue with her reading. It sounds like some kind of alien language.

Eleanor has taken to pointing at things and going “Uh!” when she wants it. We’ve also been trying to get her to name some things. We’ll say “Big Bird” (from Sesame Street) and she’ll say “Duh Duh!”.

“Big Bird!”

“Duh Duh!”

“Big Bird!”

“Duh Duh!”

We don’t get very far with this. She also uses “Duh!” (just a single syllable) for “fish”. She does switch over to “Bah!” for ball, balloon, and book.

Neither of them are walking yet. They’re great at standing while holding things, or just barely touching something else for a sense of security, but as soon as they feel like they’re standing on their own, they sit down.

We’ll have another update in about another month.

Today we had our weight check. Miranda gained over one pound in less than a month! So, she’s now 18 pounds 14 ounces, which is 10th percentile (up from 5th). Her height, by the way, is the 50th percentile. Eleanor, on the other hand, only gained two ounces, so she’s the same weight as Miranda, 18 pounds 14 ounces, down from the 15th percentile. The pediatrician was concerned about Eleanor because she’s 80th percentile in height, so she can’t have biologic failure to thrive, she just doesn’t get enough calories.

Well, my efforts to make their food more calorically dense worked for Miranda because she eats everything I cook. I made the rice, chicken, egg, and vegetable “chop suey” that my friend Sophia suggested, and she wolfed that down. Eleanor, on the other hand, doesn’t eat anything that I make, so she only eats jarred baby food, which I think is surprisingly TOO healthy. There’s really not much fat in commercial baby food.

Bernard suggested putting a pat of butter in each jar of Eleanor’s baby food, which we may have to resort to doing. We’re also going to try another one of Sophia’s suggestions, which is to “spike” her milk with formula. One scoop of formula in a 7 ounce bottle of milk makes it 26 calories per ounce, instead of 19 calories per ounce. Anyway, we have to do another weight check next month, so Operation Fatten Them Up continues.