I couldn't put up a column yesterday because apparently bad days can carry over into the next day, as well, and Wednesday was such a train wreck of a day that my faculties were completely gone by the evening, when I usually write, and all I could do was lie on the couch, watch House Hunters International, and feel jealous of the attractive young British woman who bought the world's coolest loft apartment in the heart of Amsterdam. [more]

Remember Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day? Nothing goes right for him: his brother punches him, he falls in a mud puddle, he doesn't get to pick the sneakers he likes and, to add insult to injury, his mom serves lima beans for dinner. I always think back to that book whenever one of my own kids has a bad day--not just a Bad Day, but a terrible, horrible, no-good bad day. Those kind of days are special and in a class all by themselves. [more]

It figures that, on the heels of writing a blog about letting kids be kids, the parenting world is all in a rage about a nine-year-old who is acting anything but his age. Turns out the kid can throw 40-mile-per-hour strikes in a youth baseball league that is used to pitches much, much, much slower. [more]

The Olympics are over; our evenings just got a lot duller, and last night, as we watched the closing ceremony, we felt decidedly deflated. August is definitely a dark period in TV watching, and the Olympics were a bright spot shining in the midst of lots of bad reality shows and tired repeats of Law & Order episodes. Plus, everywhere we went, people were talking about the Olympics. On our parenting support group's Yahoo board, people were excited about Michael Phelps. [more]

A year or so ago, my book “Go-to Guides for Guys: ABCs for Expectant Dads” was published (by a competing publisher to my current blogging “employer”). The book has done reasonably well, has received mostly good reviews, and seems to bring a number of laugh-out-loud moments to those who have read it. [more]