Regular Life

You ever try plain, low-fat yogurt? I don’t mean vanilla. I mean plain. No sweeteners or flavors added.
It’s brutal.
It’s hard to eat healthy foods. Not just because of the taste or the cost, although those always are considerations. Part of the reason is that once I’ve decided to plunk down the extra cash for an [...]

“R used to be my sister when we were little babies. Then I grew up to be a big boy and she didn’t grow, so we sold her to O’s family.”
– Benjamin, age 4, to his Grammy, age something greater than 4
Our son likes to make up his own narratives while playing. Sometimes [...]

Three toys I saw online made me scratch my head. We’ll get to those after a brief, topical discussion (210 words — short for me!).
On my lunch hour Monday, I heard Dr. Susan Linn deride children’s exposure to television commercials and media-based toys. Her organization, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, suggests buying toys [...]

Note: I placed a new page banner for December, 2007. Refresh your browser if you still see a sideways boy up there.
I watched four-year-old Benjamin work his tiny scissors through a piece of construction paper.
“That’s a pretty good cut, son,” I said.
“Thank you. It’s my pleasure, Daddy.”
Such manners. That’s my boy. And thus begins another [...]

If you haven’t heard this and you are or have been the parent of at least a three or four-year-old, then you will get a kick out of it and maybe even be moved by the time he finishes. It has been played more than a million times so far and has been played on [...]

How can one very small person instill such joy and frustration in the same moment?
Our son Benjamin is four years old, plus some change. Only slightly larger than the average child his age, in his nearly 40-pound frame he packs an emotional punch that can elicit amazement, bewilderment, consternation, and every emotion between, without warning [...]

Without even trying, our four-year-old son has made me more honest, less lazy, and happier. All this while occasionally getting so far under my skin that I want to yell (and, since I’m so honest now, I admit I have failed to suppress that urge more than a few times). In the same day (sometimes [...]

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I’m amazed at how children can completely ignore a concept, but once you give it a name you can’t get it out of their heads. Benjamin has a new favorite word, and I’m afraid I’ve created a monster.
Just about the only remaining frustration for us while preparing Ben for bed was [...]

Ben’s logic continues to develop. And I quote:
“Did this fish have a mouth? Was it alive and swimming in the water?”
After he gets the answer, “Yes,” he continues to wolf down his baked salmon. So, we dodge that bullet.
Then this one comes when the in-laws have us over for steak (it was delectable):

(click any pic for bigger and better version)
Zero score and four years ago a mother and father brought forth on this continent a new boy, conceived in the bedroom and dedicated to the proposition that all children aren’t created equal.
Now we are engaged in a civil war, testing whether that boy or any boy so [...]