My 5-year-old and I have many deep and profound conversations at night while we’re lying in his bed. Well, deep and profound might be a bit of a stretch, but they are sometimes interesting, and I often learn a thing or two about his day.
Read MoreWhen I was approached by Life of Dad with the opportunity to represent them at the special Undercover Tourist Family Fun Fest event at Universal Studios, I snatched it up faster than Harry Potter grabbing the snitch.
Read MoreHonestly, it’s a simple ask. I don’t understand why you’re struggling with this so much.
Read MoreThree weeks of winter vacation felt like a bit much. To break the monotony, I signed my oldest son up for something called Eco Camp.
Read MoreI won’t generalize based on ten or so days of volunteering; I’m sure there are tons of dads out there volunteering their hearts out. Probably a lot more than I am. But at the risk of being didactic, I have a message for my fellow dads who haven’t tried on their school volunteer badge yet: Sign up to volunteer at your children’s school!
Read MoreWe got a new dishwasher recently. That might not sound like a monumental event worth recording for posterity, but…wait, who am I kidding?
If getting a new dishwasher isn’t a life-changing event, I don’t know what is.
Read MoreAh, summer! There’s nothing quite like the heat, sun, tremendous thunderstorms, and long, languorous days. Of course, those days seem even longer when you have a toddler in the house.
I have one toddler left — a recently-turned 3-year-old to be exact — so I still have to get creative to help us avoid a summer swoon. Actually, that’s not true at all. I don’t get creative; I let my 3-year-old get creative and I follow her lead.
Read MoreRecently my 3-year-old daughter asked me to play a game with her. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse — literally, she was holding me hostage — so we went into her brother’s rooms because that’s where we keep the board games scattered around on the floor.
Read MoreWhat can I say? Family bike rides always look like such wholesome family fun.
Read MoreSome graduations don’t require caps and gowns. Rather, all it takes is some comfortable toilet paper, a copious supply of Peppa Pig underwear, and a pile of very absorbent towels.
As of this week, I’m done with diapers. It’s been more than seven years, but now it’s over.
Read More“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.
Read MoreAround these parts, summer doesn’t officially start until our first family beach day.
I wrote last year about how we had to wait out a week of subtropical rain storms before we could kick off our summer. This year, there were no such weather delays.
Read MoreThey say to meet your children where they are. Anyway, I think that’s what they say.
While I was playing with my kids recently, silently bemoaning my fate as I often do when they rope me into some confounding activity that I barely understand, this mantra popped into my head.
Read MoreI’m not saying I’m getting desperate, but I decided it would be fun for us to take a family outing to Lowe’s over the weekend. This may sound crazy, but I can explain. We need some new carpet, and anything beats sitting around and watching YouTube. Or so I thought.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreEven now, he stills chooses the rocking chair some nights. I try not to take it for granted. He’s almost five and he seems to get a little bigger every day. He’ll be heading to kindergarten soon. When we lie in bed together, it’s not immediately quiet anymore. He tells me seemingly random facts that I finally realized he had learned at school that day.
Read MoreI’ve been a parent for more than seven years and it has really messed with my sense of time and age. On one hand, my children change so rapidly from week to week and year to year that it’s impossible to go long without thinking about the passage of time. On the other hand, I feel almost ageless. Certainly not in a narcissistic or boastful way. Quite the opposite really. My body feels the years, but my sense of self sometimes feels stuck in the past.
Read MoreI had just picked out my purchases when my daughter coughed once, hesitated for a moment, and emptied the contents of her stomach onto her tulle (maybe?) skirt and the linoleum floor
Read MoreSure, she looks cute and innocent, but when it comes to competition, she’s cold-blooded.
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 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.