If you’re looking to shake up your fitness regimen, I can’t recommend Lego Club highly enough.
All you need is to consult your local public library’s activity schedule, locate the correct room when you arrive at the appointed time, and bring along a 1-year-old. This last part is key. If you don’t have a 1-year-old handy, just let me know. I’d be happy to lend you mine.
Read MoreMy first car buying experience came when I was twenty years old and it taught me one thing: buying a car is the worst. My parents and I traded in my hand-me-down Mustang (trust me, it’s not as great as it sounds) at one of those car sales dealers hold in strip mall parking lots. After about seven hours of distress, we drove away in a shiny new, forest green Mazda Protégé.
Read MoreAs the parent of three children under age six, I often wonder what parenting young children was like before the internet and technology took over the world. Now, when I am home with the kids—ages 1, 3, and 5—particularly on the seemingly endless and oppressively hot Florida days, we spend more time than we probably should watching the limitless supply of television shows and movies available on Netflix and YouTube or playing with tablets and other electronic devices.
Read MoreYou know it’s coming. For some of you, it might already be here. Or maybe, wherever it is you live, perhaps it’s already passed. If so, congratulations. Here in Florida, though, it’s just about to start. Fall festival season. Also known as the time of year when my anxiety about disappointing carnival workers and going broke buying 25-cent stuffed animals for five dollars really starts to ramp up.
Read MoreSure, there are moments of enjoyment and fun and wonder, but such moments are often overshadowed, if not completely overwhelmed, by the relentlessness of mundane household tasks and childcare necessities.
Read MoreI checked the library schedule by the desk. I kind of side shuffled over all nonchalant while watching 3-year-old and 1-year-old coloring on the paper-covered table. I didn’t want the librarians to think I was up to something. Like looking at the schedule, for example.
As I suspected. Preschool Story Time was happening. And the next session started in ten minutes.
BOOM.
Read MoreWhen you have three little kids, family dinner is a much better idea in theory than in practice.
Perhaps we’re just doing it wrong and we have no control over our children—I am more than certain this is what the internet will think—but our family dinners tend to be more wild bachelor party and less Leave It To Beaver.
Read MoreAs I watched my three children — ages five, three, and one — play with and around each other in our living room on a sleepy summer afternoon, I thought about the central role sibling relationships play in imprinting indelible aspects of our selves. These relationships, our earliest and most visceral, shape how we place ourselves in the world, both in the present and future.
Read More
Photo Credit: Michelle C Photo
My 3-year-old said his school is wrapped in wrapping paper and is flying in the sky with his friends and teachers inside. It’s scheduled to arrive in our backyard this week, where it will land and take up indefinite residence. He doesn’t know his teacher’s name, but, not to worry, she knows her name.
The school has several very large garages that house all the school buses. Importantly, it also has lots of bathrooms and toilet paper. I thought last week was an Interesting week, but this week promises to be something else.
If you love this post, I have some good news. My book, Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years, is available at Amazon. And if you haven’t, don’t forget to like my Facebook page.
I once told my therapist that one of the most difficult, or at least confusing, things about being a stay-at-home parent is that although I always feel tired and vaguely busy, it sometimes seems like I never actually accomplish anything. Like, at the end of the day, when the kids are all tucked into bed, I often have a hard time pinpointing exactly what I did to fill all the hours.
Read MoreStrangely, as I’ve gotten older, my attention span has tended to decrease rather than increase. I believe this shift is largely driven by technology. I have a hard time watching a television show without checking my phone. My mind wanders easily. I’ve open and closed at least five different tabs on my computer while typing this paragraph.
Read MoreThe days before Irma’s arrival were typical for Florida under threat of hurricane. I’ve lived here all my life and if there is one thing you can count on it is that Floridians prepare for hurricanes with flamboyant zeal. It is our state’s favorite pastime. Boarding up windows, buying water and snack foods, hoarding batteries, filling up our cars and seventeen plastic containers with gas: We love that stuff! In most cases, the preparation goes to waste when the storms veer off into the Atlantic or swerve into the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps it’s a bit macabre, but you can almost feel a whiff of disappointment in the hot, humid air when the hurricanes turn away and leave us to consume ungodly amounts of granola bars in our air-conditioned homes.
Read MoreI certainly expected that first drop-off to be more dramatic and emotional. So, after the first day was successfully in the books, I figured we were out of the woods. I was wrong.
Read MoreMy five-year-old, Jacob, is a master of sleight of hand and deception. There is nothing he enjoys more than savaging an unsuspecting mark with a brutal practical joke. Well, as long as the target is okay with it. And, even then, it’s good to take precautions to avoid any unnecessary mess or inconvenience. It’s important to take a paper towel or two along just in case there’s a mess that requires immediate cleaning up.
Read MoreOver the weekend my wife and I took a one-night trip to West Palm Beach to take in a Green Day concert and get one night of uninterrupted sleep. As we were walking into the amphitheater, I couldn't help but notice that I was the only one who had printed my tickets on card stock. Pretty embarrassing for everyone else. As it turns out, though, while card stock is undeniably classy, it is a bit hard to fold up and store after entry. Luckily, my shirt had a handy breast pocket that was perfect for the job!
Read More“Daddy! Daddy! DADDY!!” my 5-year-old exclaims from his perch in the back seat of our car.
“Yes, bud. What?” I finally reply. We are in the middle of a one-sided conversation about our impromptu trip to the fruit and vegetable stand and I am a little annoyed I have to respond since I have been listening to an uninterrupted monologue for several minutes.
“Is it going to be beautiful there?”
Read MoreIn retrospect, perhaps I should have known that this particular morning was going to be different.
Read MoreI came across a story on Twitter in the aftermath of Charlottesville. I took screen grabs of it so you can read the thread in full. As you'll see, it starts out with "Hey everyone I'm a clown." Of course, after reading the first phrase I was completely in on the story no matter what it was going to be. The fact that she followed it up with "and here's my take on male violence in America" was icing on the cake.
Read MoreAn interview with author James Breakwell (aka Exploding Unicorn) about his forthcoming book...and zombies.
Read MoreOur oldest child, Jacob, recently started kindergarten. As you might expect, it has been the main event in our household and the driving force behind our daily schedule. Where our mornings used to be a slow, often unpredictable and messy morass of waking, dozing, eating, and sometimes returning to bed or falling back to sleep on various pieces of furniture between the hours of five and eight, we now operate with military-like precision. Well, maybe military-like precision is overstating it a little, but we have made it to school on time for the first seven days!
Read MoreI’m going to keep this one casual because I feel like our relationship is strong enough to handle a little unfiltered, old-school blogging! My kids were on Spring Break last week. It’s hard to believe we’re three-quarters of the way through another school year. Time sure does fly, and empires sure do crumble right before our eyes, etc.
My children have had many long, elaborate, and often incomprehensible bedtime routines. I’ve written about these rituals several times because this nightly production has been a pillar of my existence for over a decade. It takes up a lot of space in my head and sometimes causes a fair amount of stiffness in my lower back.
I was sitting by myself in my car in a shopping plaza parking lot, scrolling my phone for a moment before heading to my next destination when a mom and her two little kids took me back in time.
The tattoo artist worked meticulously but quickly on my knuckle tattoos as I sat hunched over in a straight-backed chair, my arm resting on a paint-splattered wooden table. It was one of those fuzzy days between Christmas and New Year’s when time ceases to have any meaning and our actions have zero consequences.
I was sitting by myself in my car in a shopping plaza parking lot, scrolling my phone for a moment before heading to my next destination when a mom and her two little kids took me back in time.
My three children stood together in the open space between the doors of a mostly empty subway car with bright eyes and big smiles.
My family discovered a new outdoor activity that helped us ward off the mid-summer malaise but after just a few days, bruises, bumps, and a broken-down car ended our fun.
My debut novel LOVE’S A DISASTER is out NOW and I have created a playlist of songs to accompany the book!
It’s the last day of school before Spring Break starts. You’ve just attended your child’s Field Day or Picnic Day or It’s Not Break Yet But It Kind Of Is Day and all that time spent under the blazing sun surrounded by 800 screaming children has made you a little punchy.
In the spring of 2019, less than a year before the world shut down, my wife, three kids, and I took a spring break trip from our home in Florida to the UK. Michelle and I traveled quite a bit before we had kids, including a 10-month stay in Cambridge, where I completed a one-year master’s program. Since having kids, we’ve rarely left the house, let alone the country.