10 Ways Parenting is Like the Olympics

10 Ways Parenting is Like the Olympics

Raising kids often feels like a contact sport. Or an endurance test. Or both. It’s actually more like 50 different sports all wrapped up in one. In short, it’s like the Olympics.

Maybe it’s not cross-country skiing, and it’s definitely not a biathlon (guns don’t kill people, terrible gun laws that allow people to easily kill other people with guns kill people), but it’s certainly something of a marathon. It might even be curling, but I don’t understand curling, so we’re sticking with marathon, and maybe some ice dancing (I don’t understand that either).

I’ve never participated in the Olympic games, but I have seen them on TV. A lot. They’re always on. And after years of being a spectator, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Olympics aren’t that different from having kids.

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Valentine’s Nay

Valentine’s Nay

Valentine’s Day approaches.

Countless couples and would-be couples are, as we speak, scrambling to find romantic ways to mark the occasion. It’s stressful and time-consuming and expensive and, for those without sweethearts, frustrating and pathetic and why does God hate me?!

We all know that in its modern-day incarnation, Valentine’s Day is a holiday propped up by candy companies and card companies and restaurants and Yankee Candle, and yet even those of us who reject the concept often end up making some kind of concession to it, if only so our significant others don’t feel left out when the sheep in the office get flowers and they don’t.

Even the least cynical among us can see through the heart-shaped nonsense to the heartless industry behind it. So why do we get our kids involved?

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Zombie Post: Jumping Through Rings

Zombie Post: Jumping Through Rings

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on NBC, the Olympics are back. Again. I swear, ever since they started alternating the Winter and Summer games, it seems like they’re always on, or almost on, or were just on. They’re fine. Some of the sports are great. If there’s a real story –Read more about Zombie Post: Jumping Through Rings[…]

The Secret Villains of FROZEN

The Secret Villains of FROZEN

Like tons of little kids this winter, my son loves Frozen.

Until recently, he’d never been to a movie theater. But he’s shown the attention to span to watch full movies at home (the usual Pixar suspects, and The Polar Express, which he’s still talking about two months after Christmas, because trains + Christmas = little boy heroin), and since we’d been hearing such great things about it, we decided to take him to see the new Disney flick. (The Wolf of Wall Street was sold out.)

A month later, Frozen has seized favorite-movie status Tom Hanks’ dead-eyed motion-capture debacle, and “Let It Go” has joined “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)” as one of Detective Munch’s favorite songs (also on the list: “Royals” and “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn”).

I’ll probably be watching this movie for years to come. I’d better get something off my chest first.

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The Dark Side of Parenting

The Dark Side of Parenting

In the comments of a recent post, a dad blogger friend (Neal Call, at the awesome Raised By My Daughter. There’s cartoons!) wrote the following:

“Such an irritating truth: that I desperately await those unlikely moment of quiet in the day, and then once they arrive, all I can think about is small dead things.”

Hmm. Morbid much? And yet I know exactly what he means.

Since I’ve become a dad, all day I dream about death.

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