How about the Seattle Pilots?

This is what happens when you focus group something. Why don't you ask actual soccer fans? You mean to tell me Seattle's new MLS team will be named one of these?

• Seattle Alliance
• Seattle Republic
• FC Seattle
  

The teams in my co-rec indoor league are sporting better names than these dogs. Alliance sounds like a taxi cab or insurance company. Republic? Come on, this is a Democratic town. FC Seattle is better, but not very creative. I guess you can call them the Sounders, but maybe it's time to move on.

Hopefully they'll keep Squatch in town when the Sonics move, and make him a soccer mascot.

UPDATE: It's Seattle Sounders FC.

More LOLRocco

I'm probably behind on this but I see that fd's flickr toys has a LOL(blank) generator. Better than my quick photoshop jobby down below.



Ok, it's not that funny...

Crayon Physics

Here's a video game I'd let Roc play any day...



...if he can get me away from the computer long enough

Undercover Parenting

Caught this in the NYT, which asks the question "Is keylogging your kid's computer an invasion of his/her privacy?"

"Some will say that you should simply trust your child, that if he is old enough to go on the Internet he is old enough to know the dangers. Trust is one thing, but surrendering parental responsibility to a machine that allows the entire world access to your home borders on negligence."

My solution? Sure, the kids can use teh intArwebz, but we're going back to dialup. Remember how long it took for porn to load back in the day? If you wanted to see Erika Eleniak's boobs, you had to wait 5 minutes for a single pic to load. Kinda made the whole thing pointless. And forget about trying to DL a movie...

Back on topic: the thing is that I'm my kids' Dad, not their best friend. The trick is to protect them from all dangers while developing a sense of self confidence and responsibility. If I have to play the bad guy once in awhile, so be it. They have to earn their privileges before they're granted, rather than give something to them and hope/assume they can handle it. I think that applies to pretty much everything, not just the internet. Everyone talks about "kids nowadays" and their sense of entitlement, and I don't want mine to be like that.

A work in progress...

Some things ARE cheaper at Whole Foods...

...like pregnancy tests. You eliminate the fancy packaging and complicated digital readings, you can get 3 tests for like 5 bucks, according to Jalanquera.



(note the brilliant use of Comic Sans)

Roc's gonna be a big brother. Yay! Our plan was that we would start working on kidB when he turns 1 (which is only a couple weeks away), but we just accelerated that timeline by around 3 months or so. What can I say? We're fortunate to be so fertile, I guess. You know how it is, you stop breastfeeding, go on vacation, yadda yadda yadda, we're pregnant.

The Shmoo is doing fine, rolling along now at 12 weeks. His/her parents are a little stressed out, though. Happy, excited, but a little anxious. Can we afford another mouth to feed? Can you raise 2 kids in 800 square feet? (Yes, you can, no matter what the McMansion crowd tells you) Can we afford another kid? How is Rocco gonna handle all this? Can we afford another kid in childcare?

We think we're going to have this baby at home, with a midwife and/or a doula. It's not for sure, but we're real close to making that plunge. Not that the hospital was a terrible experience, but we were just 2 nuts in a giant baby machine, and we want to take back some of the control we surrendered (willingly, at the time) to the myriad doctors, nurses, machines that beep insistently, paperwork, hospital food (which actually wasn't that bad) and cramped rooms, all of which took away from what should and can be a quiet, private, family event. Think about it, hospitals are set up to treat everything as a procedure, one that can be predicted and controlled. And it's profitable for the hospital. It's no coincidence that caesarean rates are almost 1 in 3. That's messed up, y'all.

We drank the punch, but we've not gone totally hippie mental. But....it's much cheaper than hospitals or doctors, by maybe 2/3, we're following all the normal prenatal care and tests, we're more than willing to call it off and head to the hospital at the first sign of trouble, and we have a hot tub at home. Bonus! Conventional wisdom says labor for the 2nd child is much easier and faster than the first. Rocco came without much trouble, so we're thinking that this is the way we should go.

There are a few hurdles before we commit fully to it, so stay tuned.

It ain't always dimples and chicken...

To add some yang to the yin around here, here's some unflattering photos of Rocco:







I kid because I love.