"Mom," she said, "if you put alcohol in your coffee mug the police won't know it's in there."

Oh, her teen-age years are going to be so much fun!

Then you really will need alcohol.

I love Olivia.

Cash, can you recommend any educational iTouch apps for kids? I'd love something that does timed addition and subtraction stuff for Casper, or anything that pushes phonics, and Dillo would like something fun with letters and sounds. Ideas?

I don't have an iTouch, flea but a friend has one and her kids are entranced by an app with some shapes and puzzles that I like a lot. She also has a very bright 2nd grader that plays a lot of games on it. I'll ask her for some recs.

Huh, I was sure you had one! It's fascinating to me how the kids are different with it. Dillo loves it, picked it up right away, and can teach himself new games. He thinks it's hilarious when he dies 47 times in a row in the first 10 seconds. Casper is more wary and less interested, and would rather watch videos than play games. She hates to die.

I submit to Good Things.

I want one, flea. Perhaps Santa will bring me one this Christmas!

Lemme see if I can remember the names of the apps Dylan likes...

• Monkey Preschool Lunchbox - number/color educational
• Tozzle - tons and tons of puzzles
• Finger Paint - self-explanatory
• Mr Space - not even remotely educational, Dylan just thinks it's funny to watch Mr Space get squished over and over and over
• that one where you have to pop the balloons in alphabetical order, no idea what it's called
• BurpDraw - I think that's the title. You draw a circle with your finger and then it burps at you.
• Shakezoo - you shake the iPod and it makes an animal sound

flea - we like KidCalc, Sight Words, montessori crosswords, and math bingo. HKF is a little young, but you might be able to find some stuff that's appropriate by searching on those and then looking around.

Also, she loves the drawing apps, the Lorax and Cat in the Hat, and won't play anything else now that we have Angry Birds Lite.

More recently, after two occasions when I had packages coming and found "attempted delivery" notices on the box on days when I was at home, then had the redeliver forms ignored for a week or so, I actually filed a complaint.

Back 2 apartments ago my personal letters had a tendency to arrive damaged and slightly opened (while obvious bills and junk mail were unharmed). The last straw was when a Christmas present I sent meara was returned and the carrier bent it into a curve around the outside of the mailbox rather than just leave it at my door or the manager's office. I went down to the regional USPS manager's office all livid and was waving the bent package in his face while filling out the complaint form. Then the carrier in question apparently got my address from him and left calls on my answering machine, ensuring that Hell would freeze over before I'd consider withdrawing that complaint.

Oh, Sneezies is another good little-kid game. I'd explain it but it would sound way more complicated than it actually is - Dylan doesn't entirely understand the mechanics of what he's supposed to do, but picked up enough to have fun with it in about five seconds.

Excellent! I will look into these. We have only got commercial games so far (Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Monster Dash, something Star Wars, and one that's pretty cool where you have to cut ropes in order - great for visual/spatial and logical thinking.) I am interested to see how the iTouch makes our upcoming holiday travel different. If only we had two.