Dear Son, You lost your first milk tooth today and began a life less deciduous. Congratulations. And thank goodness too because we were beginning to worry when that second row of evil-looking shark teeth appeared. You popped it out while trying to separate two LEGO bricks. LEGO truly is the Toy of Toys. We know [...]

AdventureDad recently wrote about his four-year-old boy’s request for a younger brother. He asks, “Is it foolish listening to the views and desires of a four-year-old boy?” Here’s my take: four-year-olds are idiots. I’m all for whimsy and devil-may-care attitudes. I whole-heartedly endorse and encourage the crazy antics of children. Why, as recently as yesterday [...]

The Lovely and Talented Wife brought home new Easter-themed socks for The Boy. “It’ll get him to change them,” she said. Now seeking: socks for April Fool’s day, National Poetry Month, Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, Arbor day.

Stumbled across a site for making checklists and discovered some lists on parenting. Here’s one: What kids should be able to do on their own (age 6+). Cute but not very practical. Science has shown that children are non-stop engines of destruction. This is a fact (look it up). Knowing that a child should be [...]

I don’t mean to be depressing. But you know when you enter an annual recurring event in your calendar and the calendar asks you when the event ends? Well, I like to think about that whenever I enter birthdays. In physics there are the related concepts of potential and kinetic energy. Potential energy is all [...]

“May you live in uninteresting times.” — Chinese blessing The Girl is waiting for something amazing to happen. She hopes one day her closet door will become a doorway to an enchanted kingdom or that a mysterious stranger will knock and tell her, breathlessly, that she and her latent magical powers are the key to [...]

I’ll always remember the Halloween of 2007 as the one where I barely avoided pumpkiny doom twice in one day. We started the festivities by carving pumpkins in the afternoon. The kids were very gung-ho about it all until I removed the tops and showed them what had to happen next. “You want us to [...]

The Lovely and Talented Wife, who volunteers at our elementary school, recently convinced a kindergartner to do something he didn’t want to do by offering him the next two days off from school. Guess what day it was.

I’ve discussed this with a couple of moms this month and they agree: in some ways being a single parent is actually easier than dual parenting. For instance, any decision I make is final. There are no discussions with a spouse or overturned decisions and there are no sneaky appeals. I don’t have to compromise. [...]