Actual conversation. The lovely and talented wife had just sat the boy down on the toilet and given him a quick refresher course on toilet usage. Note to new parents: you have to be pretty specific with boys about where you expect them to aim. Wife: Ok, now sit here. And don’t shoot out. Wife [...]

Having two children means repeating yourself at least twice as often as you did with only one. Children aren’t really expected to listen and follow instructions until about 30 months, but by then many couples will have already had a second. It’s a clever bit of evolution. Children who started ignoring their parents too early [...]

You should definitely check out Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki. We’ve been watching them for months. The art and animation are beautiful and the stories are elegantly simple. Both feature a strong, young female protagonist and are told from the children’s perspective. Each story builds slowly and develops the characters [...]

I don’t know about that Higgly Town Heroes show. Each episode, the kids call on an everyday hero to help them with a problem — the mail carrier, the towtruck driver, the crossing guard. So far so good, but they’ve also got a pizza delivery guy in the show. They haven’t made him the featured [...]

My children are only five and three, so it is difficult for them to understand the concept “working at home.” Until a couple of months ago, when I started this at-home gig, “Work” was someplace else. Work was the place Daddy went to every morning and came home from every night. Work might as well [...]

Son (singing): Boy boy boy boy boy boy booooyyyy! Me: Nut nut nut nut nut nut nut. Son (seriously): I’m not a nut. Me: Do you really believe that? Son: No.

Today the Girl got her last round of vaccinations and boosters until she turns eleven. We took the honest approach and told her what was going to happen and that it would hurt but not for very long. She was very brave and handled it all exceptionally well. She cried a little when the needles [...]

Or possibly, my Boy is killing me and I’m just blaming it on the Spring time change because it’s convenient. Really though, if there’s a good argument for not moving the time forward an hour in the Spring, it would be that children who can’t tell the time don’t care about the time change which [...]

I’m walking out the door right now to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Pray for me.