Not every class with mom and dad involves diagramming sentences, the history of North American settlement, or (deep breaths, de-e-e-e-p breaths) long division. Sometimes the focus of the day can be the care and feeding of the boomstick. You may know this better as gun safety and good, old-fashioned shooting. Much fun was had by […]

Bouncing around town with Tony to Tae Kwon Do, the library, the playground, school, doctors’ offices and the like, it’s inevitable that I see a variety of parenting styles. I don’t think there’s any one right way to parent, but it’s obvious that there are some … ummm … styles of parenting that are steeped […]

If I’m not posting on this blog as often as I’d like, it’s only because I’ve discovered how remarkably little can be accomplished in the brief time between dropping your kid off at kindergarten after breakfast and picking him up in time for lunch — especially since I insist on a regular exercise regimen. In […]

I’m reading Conspiracies of Rome by Richard Blake. It’s one of those rare books set in ancient Rome after the western Roman Empire has fallen. The protagonist, Aelric, is a Briton sent to Rome in 609 to make copies of books to benefit the monasteries and church schools in his home country. Upon reaching the […]

Tony started kindergarten last week, which partially explains my disappearance of late. Actually, last week was optional kindergarten “camp,” during which his teacher had the students come in before school officially started, to get them accustomed to the facilities and the routine before the big kids arrived and completely freaked them out — a scheme […]

I had planned to write before now — really and truly I did — but it took me days to recover from the whirl-wind pace set by my sister and my mother on the East Coast. Before we ever set foot among the too-verdant greenery in the vicinity of the nation’s capital, a week-and-a-half-long itinerary […]

Jennifer Senior’s New York magazine piece on “why parents hate parenting ” (hint: in general, it makes them less happy than non-parents) has generated plenty of buzz. It’s a well-written article, full of interesting insights, but I’ll be damned if I understand why an analysis of the down-side of squeezing out yard apes strikes many […]