Triple Play

From a recent visit to the children’s museum:

1. Scoop! There It Is


2. Eye Spy



3. Mirror Image (I seem to remember someone else having tunnel vision nearly five years ago.)

Longin' the Tooth(brush)

Reed is to toothbrushes what the Hamburglar is to hamburgers. The disappearance of my bristles had made me bristle some, but I couldn’t help but smile once the culprit was discovered. We’d known Reed to reach into his bathroom drawer to fetch his toothbrush, but it’s been a recent development in which he appropriates the brushes of his family members.

Before You Piano It

My mom kids us – at least I think she’s kidding – that the activities in which we enroll our daughter may border on superfluity. A early-childhood educator in a past life, she undoubtedly knows what she’s warning against – that of the hurried child – when parents overschedule and micromanage the lives of their children, thus bypassing a critical developmental period that historians have identified as “childhood.” Awareness of this reality isn’t enough to avoid its trappings, for there are plenty of well-intentioned parents who think they’re doing right by pushing their kids.

Reductively speaking, every time we sign our son or daughter up for an extracurricular activity, we’re either enriching our child or crushing a soul. Beni and I would prefer that our kids not resent us later in life, and so we are constantly evaluating and reevaluating the portfolio and extent of Olivia’s (and later Reed’s) commitments. Should we continue with swimming this season? What about Spanish classes? How about art camp?

More generally – and more importantly – we ask ourselves: Does our child even like this camp/class/sport? Is she left with enough time to play with friends? Are we paying attention to feedback? We obviously want to give our children a say in the interests they pursue, but we do want to provide some guidance along the way.

With all this in mind, Beni and I have promised each other that our family unit will remain the hub by which all our spokes connect to and life revolves around. Purposeful centering, it might be called, and it includes scheduled meals, ventures to the park, family vacations, and walks around the neighborhood. It’s a parenting philosophy that’ll give our kids, as they reach adolescence, ample reasons for asserting their independence. But until then, we’re the non-fearsome foursome, ready to experience the riches of the world together – right after Olivia completes her first piano lesson, of course.

Eat, Spray, Love

Picnics at the spray park – what’s better than that for a kid? Reed made his clothes-soaked debut at the local park, following the wet footsteps of Olivia before him.

Highway to Dell(s)

Mom and daughter took a road trip to the Wisconsin Dells, the land of cheese, water parks, and tourists (or are they locals?) who drink and smoke in excess. They met up with Beni’s college friend Jenna and her daughter Camille, who, when not swimming, spent the weekend learning from our not-so-proper child the techniques of making flatulent noises.

'Garten-Variety Show

As quickly as you can snap your fingers, clap your hands, and tap your feet along to the music of a year-end concert, the school year has come to a close. It all passed by so quickly – the parent-teacher conferences, the compositions of a budding author, volunteer opportunities, scholarly research, school lunches, and special celebrations – that it’s hard to believe and/or accept that it’s all over. Fortunately, the kids sent us parents out on a high note (literally), treating us all to a spirited concert on the last day of their school year.

Willaby Wallaby Woo Dat from chris k on Vimeo.

So On and Solo Forth from chris k on Vimeo.

Olivia and her kindergarten teachers

Sitting Down with Among Some Good Books

I’m not sure if the picture above and the one of Olivia from four years ago foretell for our kids a lifelong love of reading or a lifelong struggle with hoarding.

Bat Boy

The title of this post may conjure up a favorite subject of the Weekly World News...


...but it's actually in reference to a character from the town of Bedrock.


Reed is quite Rooseveltian (Teddy, that is) in his frequent brandishing of a big stick, often a plastic bat or a golf club. So common is the sight of him walking around with club in hand that we’ve gone to calling him Baby Bamm-Bamm, to which he responds with a kneecapping or a crushing strike to the head.

Mommy Dearest (and Nearest)

On this Mother’s Day, I extend the mother of all thanks to the mother of my children. We love you!

Let Sleeping Tots Lie

Back patio, 12:16 p.m.

Trailer Parked

A five-year age difference makes things interesting when we try to pair up our kids. (Big Sister nearly doubles Younger Brother in both height and weight.) Case in point: the bike trailer. Olivia is a little too big for it, Reed a little too small for it, and their being buckled in within a smallish moving capsule is a little too much for both of them. And so the trailer often sits motionless, as it was in these two pictures, in the back corner of our garage.

On Hallowed Playgrounds

We returned tonight to the kids’ favorite park in town, which, to our great fortune, happens to be within walking distance of our home. Beni was wrapping up her ladies weekend in the big city – a “fair sex in the city” situation, if you will – and so the kids and I headed over by stroller to our neighborhood alfresco café for some dinner and recreation. Reed spent most of the time moving earth à la Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, and Olivia hung out both on the monkey bars and with her younger brother.