The Jedi Mind Tricks of Four-Year-Old Girls

I’ve written before about how my daughter Brontë is the girliest girly-girl ever. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a girly-girl, but I tried not to brainwash her from the start. I painted her room green, bought her gender-neutral toys, and avoided all those horrible onesies with cutesy princess slogans that say crap like “I’m so […]

Nominated (Twice) For the Sunshine Blogger Award

Hello, Blogging Friends! I’m so flattered to have just been nominated twice for the Sunshine Blogger award. First by my buddy Amanda at Just In Queso, a glorious blog celebrating cheese (which I can totally get behind) and other assorted comedy subjects, like Friends episodes. You know you want to check it out. And if that […]

Carrots, Sticks, and Goldilocks Parenting

Parenting is infinitely complicated, but for the sake of discussion, I’m going to greatly oversimplify it by saying it all comes down to managing the carrot and the stick. Some parents are into the stick-heavy approach, meaning they believe in high expectations, firm discipline and obedience. They believe children are naturally defiant, lazy, and need to be wrestled into social conformity […]

Mommy Wars, “Me-ternity” Leave, and American Desperation

Lately, I’ve been thinking the term “Mommy Wars” is a bit of a misnomer. Sure, there’s a lot of in-group bickering going on about stuff like using formula vs. breastfeeding, staying at home vs. going back to work, and whether we should be allowed to skip vaccinations. But the term “mommy wars” makes it seem like we wouldn’t […]

The Return of Mr. Keyhat

I just caught Brontë shaking salt on her forearm and then eating it. Who has been doing tequila shots in front of my baby?Speaking of altering one’s consciousness, is it wrong that I like to spin my toddler in circles just to watch her run diagonally? She seems to enjoy it, running up and begging […]

My Toddler Demands Duck Lessons

Ah, to be a little kid again, when the line between fantasy and reality is blurry and even mundane stuff is still exciting… I wish, for example, that I could find ANYTHING as entertaining as my daughters find bath time. Seriously. Even though they bathe all the time, they still race up the stairs, tripping over the clothes they’re simultaneously fighting to tear off, every […]

Preschools and Snot-Driven Plague Vectors

Hello, readers and fellow bloggers. Hope you’ve all been well and I mean to catch up with you guys, but I’ve been knee-deep in the parenting trenches of full-blown family sickness for the past week… There are some aspects of parenting we’ve all heard jokes about our entire lives. You’ve heard them so much, in fact, […]