Change is an inevitable part of life. Time makes you bolder. Children get older. The soreness you experience after playing a tennis tournament lingers for several extra days. On the other hand, things that used to bother you, suddenly don't seem so important anymore. Like dirt. In particular, your children's fascination with it.
Read MoreSure, she looks cute and innocent, but when it comes to competition, she’s cold-blooded.
Read MoreThis is Two
Two is sticky. Sticky hands. Sticky faces. Sticky hair. Sticky tables. Sticky everything.
Read MoreThis year I've taken a new tact when my kids are arguing with each other or whining to me. I say to them in my most serious voice, "That's enough. It's 2019. No one has time for this!"
Read MoreYou might find this hard to believe, but I wasn’t a big fan of Chuck E. Cheese even when I was a kid. There was just something about it. I’m not sure what. Perhaps the fact that it’s a life-sized petri dish filled with every strain of virus and bacteria known to man? Yes, that’s probably it. Fun fact: There are a couple of bacterial strains that exist only inside Chuck E. Cheese. The “E” stands for Escherichia.
Read MoreMy 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.
Read MoreI’m sure things like having an important job and fancy cars and a lot of money are nice, but they certainly pale in comparison to finding a park that is right next to a railroad track.
Read MoreWell, sure, there are many things you have to hide from your children, but making beds isn’t one of them, right? Wrong.
Read MoreYou 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.
Read MoreAround these parts, school is out for the entire week of Thanksgiving. Kids have it so easy these days. Back in my day, we got Thursday and Friday off. That was it.
Read MoreFor most families, preschool show-and-tell is an afterthought. Typically, the children at our school bring an assortment of seemingly random toys and items that might or might not have any connection to the weekly themes. For our family, show-and-tell is also an afterthought, but a very competitive one.
Read MoreI was fortunate to have the opportunity to sit down with James again to discuss his new book. And obviously, what really happened is we emailed each other using our phones while sipping on beers.
Read MoreOur second day in the mountains started with me picking sopping wet trash off the gravel driveway and placing it in a fresh trash bag. Apparently, we had a visitor during the night. The entire wooden container that housed two trash cans was turned over on its side. After I had cleaned up the trash, I went to flip the container up off its side, but it didn’t budge.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIt took us three tries, but it seems we might have pulled it off. We finally produced a decent hide-and-seek player.
Read MoreOne of my four-year-old’s favorite activities is driving by houses of people we know. Not going to their houses, of course, just driving by casually. Peak drive-by time can vary, but it is typically right before or after school.
Read MoreAn acrobat known as Red Panda has been a staple of basketball halftime shows across the country for more than twenty years. I once saw her in person at an NBA game years before I had children. I was stunned by her simple in concept, yet seemingly impossible in practice, act. In short, she rides a very tall unicycle, places an increasing numbers of bowls onto her foot and leg, flips the bowls into the air, and catches them in a stack on her head.
Read MoreThe start of first grade for my oldest child has brought something new to my life. The Class Dojo app.
Read MoreMy six-year-old made me a treasure hunt to complete one afternoon recently. Making a treasure hunt is the kind of thing you do on hot, stormy afternoons in August when it’s impossible to go outside and your dad finally makes you turn off the TV and electronics for a few minutes.
Read MoreThere are a few key items every dad has to check off his dad list and perhaps the most important one is changing a flat tire on the side of the highway with your family in the car.
And, as of this weekend, I have checked it off.
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.