Toddler Fun: Books are OK again.

J., R.'s brother, got T. the Tag Learning System for Xmas. Even tho J. did not consult the Amazon wish list for T., so this is pretty amazing (I quickly deleted it from the wishlist, to avoid havoc and unhappiness).

T. was fiddling with my kindle, which makes me a little nervous because it tends to fall out of the cover. He did let me run through _Ozzie and Mack_ while he played with the kindle, and later let me get about halfway through it with evening snack. I also sang _Snugglepuppy_ to him, and read 1 and a half times through an alphabet book (author's name escapes me right now, but it is all animals, including quokka and uakari and xenops).

Given that for quite a while, books were a justification for a screaming tantrum, this is hugely exciting.

Housing Crisis and Divorce

Calculated Risk has been talking for a while about how the housing crisis is affecting the mobility of employees in the US, long considered a big benefit of the job market in this country. But the housing crisis also affects people trying to split up. This ground has been covered in a variety of areas, most recently here at the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/us/30divorce.html?_r=1

I am reminded of Mira Kirshenbaum's excellent book, _Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay_. While this article frames it as, oh, so sad that the relationships have to continue after the divorce, another way to look at it is that a booming housing market facilitated divorce. Weird stuff.

ETA: H/T CR again, of course.