My daughter is only seven, but she’s already worked the worst job in the world.

I’ve been really getting into bicycle repair lately.

It’s probably my number one passion if you don’t count nagging my kids to do their homework.

If you’re a parent who spends a lot of time online, it’s hard to escape the meme about making the most of the 18 summers you have with your children before they leave home.

When you’re a parent, you eventually find some sort of rhythm. It doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it probably takes years for almost everyone. The addition of another child at any point along the road typically requires a reset.

Most weekdays now I drop my kids off at school around 7:30 in the morning while the light is soft and the Florida winter air feels expectant.

My life has been very Frozen-centric lately. My three-year-old’s obsession with the movie started a couple months ago and is still going strong. Her passion seems to be carrying as much momentum as Kristoff’s sled trying to escape from the wolves. Incidentally, some might argue her love for Frozen is as frightening as a hungry pack of wolves.

There are lots of ways to celebrate Christmas and it’s typically difficult to determine if any one is better than another. There is one exception.

All my children are experiencing a much different kind of childhood. One lived as part of a small tribe. A tribe that is peaceful and united one moment and engaged in all out civil war the next. I can only imagine how different it is to share the spotlight every day of your young life. But perhaps it is most different for my younger son, our middle child.

The kids and I went to the park one day recently and I met someone. Honestly, it was kind of magical. He was a grandfather with shaggy gray hair, glasses, and a mustache like a silver comb. His granddaughter was a peppy little girl with icy blond hair and bare feet which were dirty enough to suggest they had been there for a while before our arrival.

“Hey, daddy! Look! There’s a turtle sitting by our front door,” one of my children announced excitedly on a hot afternoon in May.

Florida is wild. You can hardly set foot outside your front door without stepping on something squirmy or slithery. And while most people probably know about the alligators, the turtles, the humidity, and the Florida Man, if you don’t live here, you’re probably not as familiar with our vegetation.

It's just sports, right?

I didn’t play youth soccer for long, but I made a huge impact. I played just one season when I was five or six, but my unique style and flair is still widely talked about. By my mom, mostly, but still, talked about.

The line snaked around in front of us, chasing its tail slowly. It was like the queue for Disney ride but the reward for making it through was confusion about where to go next. We assured the kids it would move quickly but we were lying. It was slow. Slower than slow.

Parenting is hard. It’s physically and emotionally draining. The days can feel endless, and perhaps even worse, the nights can feel even longer. Is there something longer than endless? Yes. Webster’s defines “longer than endless” as nights spent with children who don’t sleep and also the amount of time it takes for children under age seven to get dressed in the morning.

My four-year-old went to the dentist this week for his third of four restorative appointments. It’s been a slog trying to undo four years of poor dental hygiene, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. That light got a little bit brighter today at the end of his appointment, but as is the fear, it turned out to be an oncoming train.

You might remember that one of my children’s shared passions used to be wandering around the neighborhood looking at children to stare at. Well, we’ve taken our game to the next level this holiday season. Their new passion? Wandering around the neighborhood after dark and stopping to pose for photos in front of other people’s decorations.

The kids had a couple days off for fall break last week, and so, because we are rugged people, we made a dash to the mountains of North Carolina.

Having grown up and lived almost my whole life in Florida, you might not expect me to be a mountain man, but I most definitely am. In fact, many years ago when I went away to law school in Virginia for six weeks, I bought a pair of hiking boots, which still sit in my closet under a pile of pillows to this very day. It’s not so much that you live in the mountains, it’s that the mountains live inside you.

If I had to stand up in front of the class and tell everyone what we did this summer—and thankfully I don’t have to do that—this is what I would say.

We did a little bit of everything and a little bit of nothing.

I recently took my three kids (ages six, four, and two) on a road trip from Florida to North Carolina without my wife because I am a crazy person. A funny thing happened, though; it turned out okay. Maybe I’m not so crazy after all (nope, my wife has confirmed that I’m still crazy).

Before you read any further, check out Part I of this story.

I know you’ve all been wondering, so an update is long overdue. The landscaping project is still going wonderfully. Thanks for asking!

It’s nice to be seen for once. Our house is tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac, so we don’t get much casual traffic. And even when we had a large number of people over—earlier this month for a kids’ birthday party—literally no one commented on the upgrades to the front yard.