I’d say when you’re about seven or eight you get to thinking… usually after eating dinner… that your parents unmistakably decided that in order to save themselves the agonizing monotony of doing chores… they should have kids. Clearly this logic is fundamentally accurate. Everyone knows this. Deep inside their being. And…
Back before Jacob was even three, there was this one Saturday where I popped into Flower Flour to pick-up a picnic lunch. Honestly, I was craving their pancake salad which is unbelievable. Yes, pancake salad. I’d almost completely forgotten about this particular picnic except that of course, Jakey remembers it like it…
In the last three or four months, Jacob has actually started coloring. I mean, he’s always used markers to draw on paper and the surface surrounding that which is intended to be colored, but this is different. This is real, quiet, sitting still, absorbed in concentration, coloring. The kind of…
When I was younger I had a lot of binders. Most people who know me can attest to this. And what was in those binders? Pictures I had ripped out of magazines and catalogs of things I liked: interesting travel articles, pretty bathrooms, a cute haircut. I still remember a…
I write a lot about the conversations we have at bedtime in the bottom bunk. In part because I know we’ll look back fondly on this time and wish we hadn’t spent so much time trying to extricate ourselves from the master of slumber deferment to get back to our…
When I was in college I had this little plastic ID holder the size of a credit card attached to a key ring. It held my license, my Visa, a couple of bucks, my house key, and my car key. I’d put it safely in the back of my jeans…
We’ve been a family of loyal swim students for the past 15 weeks, and in that time, we’ve had our ups and downs… our victories and our infinitesimal, I mean incremental improvements. I’m happy to report that last Saturday JJ graduated from an o-fish-al Seahorse to an o-fish-al Jellyfish. Woot-woot.…
He waits nervously in the lobby as employees stream through the front door of the modern steel office building. His new dress shoes feel stiff as he tries to fold his Wall Street Journal back into a neat square but only partially succeeds… iPads are so much better. A young…
This past Sunday I was attempting to languish in an old and lavish pastime from my youth I like to call, “reading magazines.” When I was younger, my mom and I would spend entire afternoons laying around the living room. And my dad would always come in covered in dirt…
Nate can talk. I know, I know. I’m always proclaiming this. But every time I do, it’s because it’s like he can actually talk now. Each time he crosses some invisible developmental speech level, it’s just so… apparent. There are very few times when I can’t tell what he’s saying…