Apples Falling from Trees

[Clodfobble]

You know that genetic/evolutionary thing, where you feel so inexplicably good when your kid does something just like you? Even when it's a useless or even a slightly flawed thing, there's still that part of you that swells with pride because you know it's yours, and you can identify with them just a smidgen more now?

I adore the kind of logic puzzle you see below. My 8th grade math teacher had a book of them, and I used to beg her to make me copies one at a time like heroin. Even now I still love solving them.

We gave a book of them to my stepdaughter when she was maybe 11 or 12, and she hated them. Didn't understand the concept, didn't understand the process, and definitely didn't understand the point of doing them in the first place. Apparently the book sat untouched on her bookshelf this whole time, until it resurfaced as she was packing and she offered it to the younger kids.

They both love them, especially Minifobette. She has torn through half the book already, and she's only gotten stuck once or twice. When I told her that there were more books out there, and she could ask relatives to give them to her for Christmas, her face lit up like I'd just told her fairies were real.

Yep, she's my daughter. And I'm nothing but a product of my evolutionary instincts, because that makes me very happy.