My boys are both well past the sleep training phase, but I was recently asked for my advice, so here it is:

- treat daytime and nighttime different.  At night, the curtains go down, lights get dim, voices get soft, no more playing or exciting interactions.

- bedtime routines are important.  Do the same things in the same order every night.  Pajamas, story, lullaby, then lights out.

The truth is I never left; I've just been active on other parts of the internet.  For the new year, I finally fixed that, with a new home page that accurately reflects where I am online these days.  Please follow and engage; that's the whole point, right?  Also let me know what you think about the t-shirt idea.

Yes, this is another trite screed about refugees.  But it's heartfelt.

Passover is coming up, and so for family movie night we watched the Prince of Egypt.  We were watching the scene where the Jews are finally able to leave Egypt, and I turned to Yelena and wondered aloud: "Is this how my grandparents felt when they were liberated from the Holocaust?*  Is this how your family felt when you left Soviet Russia?"