Unicorn Wallets, Tea Parties, and Brain Fog
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It only took about two weeks of kindergarten for my daughter to master the fine art of persuasion.
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Writing about parenting, fatherhood, life, and all things ambiguous
What This Messed Up Start to the School Year Needed Was a Little Hoppiness
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The past few weeks around these parts have been rough. Just a couple of months ago, there was hope that this school year would be better than last. Nope. It’s remarkably worse.
Read MoreWe’re Going to Have to Slow Down and Take This School Year One Day (or Hour) at a Time
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My oldest son who is nine years old and just starting fourth grade entered quarantine four days after school started back.
Read MoreNews Flash: Kids Can Change Quickly
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It’s easy to forget how fast your kids can change until they remind you.
Read MoreHow My Son and I Are Growing Up Together This Summer
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The first full week of school summer vacation kicked off with all three of my children attending tennis camp for four hours each day. This might not sound like much, but it was monumentally significant for me because it marked the first time in more than nine years of parenting that all my children were away at the same time.
Read MoreIf You’re Struggling With Homeschooling a Preschooler, You’re Not Alone
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According to UNICEF, at least 40 million preschool children worldwide have missed out on early education because of COVID-19. This is a staggering statistic, but while I was searching for information on how missing preschool could affect a child’s development, I could not find any data on how many would-be preschoolers have started naming letters of the alphabet “Jeff.”
Read MoreHow a Tiny Dog Helped Me Find My Way
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Before there was a wife and three kids and everything else in this life that I type about on the blank white space of my laptop late at night and lay bare on the pages of the internet, there was a dog.
Read MoreHow Emptying Sand Out of My Son’s Shoes Signals a Return to “Normal”
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I picked up my first grader’s shoes one afternoon and sand spilled out of them all over the wood floors of our living room.
Read MoreA Short Car Ride with My Son Reminded Me How Difficult This Past Year Has Been for All of Us
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One recent Saturday morning, I escaped the house with my 6-year-old son to pick up coffee from a drive thru. It was a bit more mundane than some of our weekend outings pre-2020, but grading on the pandemic curve, it was probably one of the most exciting things we did all month.
Read MoreMy Little Flock Flies in Formation
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It was a strange winter break in the Knott household for several reasons I can’t really get into on the internet. There was the pandemic, of course, that limited our normal holiday festivities, but more unexpected events made the two weeks off school even more unusual.
Read MoreThis Season Is All About Finding a Little Joy and Humiliating Our Neighbors
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There’s not a lot going on right now, but that doesn’t mean my family can’t still enjoy some of our favorite seasonal pastimes like trimming the Christmas tree, counting down to Santa’s arrival, and riding bikes around the neighborhood and loudly critiquing everyone’s decorating choices.
Read MoreI’m Taking the Wins Anywhere I Can Find Them During This Crazy Year
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Most of my time these days is spent trying to figure out how to pass the time.
The pandemic has never been worse, so I feel even more compelled to stay home. Taking the kids outside to parks or playgrounds feels like it should be relatively safe, but since at least half of the community where I live has never taken the virus seriously and still doesn’t, I never feel comfortable.
Read MoreFine, I’ll Write About Distance Learning Again
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I’ve resisted writing much of anything the past couple of months because I knew if I was going to write anything during this impossible time, it was probably going to be about distance learning. And who really wants to read one more word about that?
Read MoreThere's No Joy in Pandemic Life, But There Is a Rainbow Owl
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One night recently during the stuffed animal puppet show my 6-year-old makes me do with him at bedtime several nights a week, I created a back story for one of his main stuffies — Rainbow Owl.
Read MoreWe're Really Not In This Pandemic Together
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It’s been a common refrain since the pandemic started that we’re all in this together. This sentiment has become even stronger recently in my area where schools are slated to re-open this month for in-person or online learning at parents’ discretion.
But the unfortunate truth is we’re not in this together at all.
Read MoreMy Children’s Imaginary Hair Salon Won’t Last Forever, But I’m Glad It’s Still Around
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The early years of parenting are filled with weird activities like frequenting pretend restaurants, building dollhouses out of cardboard and driving them to the playground, and conducting stuffed animal puppet shows in the dark. It can feel like these things are forever while you’re wrapped up in them, but slowly they begin to slip away.
Read MoreOur Favorite Things During a Pandemic
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One of the foundational pieces of media from my childhood is The Sound of Music. How important is the movie to my family? Let’s just say it’s one of those things where when someone marries into the family, other people who have previously married in sometimes warn the newcomer that adequate reverence for The Sound of Music is both encouraged and mandatory.
Read MoreMy Children Won't Be Returning to School in 2020
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This pandemic is impossible for everyone, but I’m starting to believe the only way to maintain some semblance of sanity is to change our timelines and expectations. Living week to week or month to month is exhausting.
Read MoreOur Bedtime Puppet Shows Might Not Win Any Awards, But I Blame the Pandemic
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It certainly seems like I write an inordinate amount about sleep, bedtime routines, and related minutiae, but as they say, “write what you know!”
Read MoreBig World Events and a Fatherless Father's Day
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One day recently, I was pushing my four-year-old daughter on the swing and she asked me to stop for a second so she could go examine something across the yard.
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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.