K has been into Little Einsteins lately. Despite my general antipathy for products of The Mouse, I like it quite a lot. I've come to realize that the children's programs that I really like (Little Einsteins, Backyardigans), are the ones that won't drive me crazy if the music gets stuck in my head. I like both series for introducing children to a variety of musical styles beyond Vapid Children's Pop. I love that Little Einsteins is teaching the rudiments of music theory.

But mostly, I'm vastly amused by the part of the program where we all cheer for Felix Mendelssohn.

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We had what I would call my first Grown Up Easter this year, where I made the effort to put some sort of special meal on the table. We've done Easter baskets for K for the past three years, but most years, we've been at someone else's house for Easter, and the years we haven't, we just never got organized enough. Easter isn't a holiday B cares about, so it's always been up to me to make the effort if I want it. And mostly life has wound up being too busy.

But this year, we invited a friend over for dinner and had a lot of fun. The children were charming, I managed to mostly not dessicate the ham (it was supposed to cook in the crockpot, but it wouldn't fit. So I had to stick it in the oven, but my recipe was for the crockpot, and the instructions on the label said two hours. After a while, it occurred to me that a ham that is already cooked and is just heating up shouldn't need two hours in the oven at 350 unless you're making jerky, so I pulled it out after an hour, thankfully before it got too dry. Next year, I'm rigging some way to do it in the crockpot anyway) and we got to enjoy strawberries and fine spring weather. We skipped church because most of the family was coming down with a cold, but everyone rallied by mid-morning, so K and I went outside and had fun hiding Easter eggs and helping each other find them. I love how she's getting old enough to start making this sort of thing really fun.

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But of course, the REALLY important event of the weekend was the new Doctor Who. We both enjoyed it quite a bit. Matt Smith has a nice zany energy that should be entertaining, but was able to bring the gravitas at the end when appropriate. He didn't have either of the two things that bugged me most about 10, which was the mopey emo and the preachiness. Tennant definitely grew on me, but after somewhere in his second season when I found myself wondering why I was so lukewarm on him in the beginning, I watched his first season again. Oh yeah. Because he was preachy and self-righteous. So far, none of that here. Okay, I wasn't incredibly fond of the bit at the very end which made it clear that the Doctor ex machina moments that feel a bit overused are going to continue, but I think that can be blamed on the writers, not this particular Doctor.