“Thank you for your concern. My name is Jeremy, by the way.” he said as he extended his hand. “That’s interesting.” I said as I shook his hand. “My name is Jeremy too.” We exchanged a friendly smile and parted ways. As I walked away, my mind was whirling with questions: Did our conversation…
Category: parenting
Of Teenage Dreams and Towel Pics
Our Storyteller (13) had a dream that she shared with us just a couple weeks ago at breakfast. She was clearly perturbed by it, and being a verbal processor, she really needed to share it with us. In her dream she was in our house, sleeping in her room in the basement, when she woke…
The Perks of Helping Your Children Clean Up Their Room
Disclaimer: if you have a habit of keeping your house picked up all the time, this blog post is probably not for you. Balancing being a work at home parent, a ballet-dad, a theatre-dad, and an involved husband and parent often means something has got to give. More often than not, it’s more than…
Poop and Snot- MY PRECIOUS!
For all you who have toddlers, had toddlers, or will have toddlers, I’m here to comfort you with a story of one of my parenting fails. I fail daily but always with style. Epic style it seems, straight from Mordor. At any moment I will have destroyed at least one of my children’s hopes…
Fighting Alongside Our Children
Parents are teachers. How many times do we say the same thing over and over in the same exact way and the message just doesn’t seem to get through? As a private piano teacher for 20 odd years, it has been my job to find the exact formula that would reach my student; the metaphor,…
A Bedtime Song for Daddy
Singing has been a part of our bedtime routine for as long as we’ve had children. It provides a moment to quiet down with one last shared experience for the day. Jessica and I each have our own selection of songs we tend to sing, but they are always slow and calm. Our kids each…
My Favorite Part About Parenting Alone for Days
My wife is away on a business trip this week, extended to a week so she can spend a few rare moments with her parents, and her brother’s family. Lucky her, she gets to hang out with them where they live in Florida – in mid-August. Lucky me, I get to parent alone for a…
How a tattoo helped me heal my mothering spirit
Ever since I was a child I have admired tattoos while finding them scary and thinking the people sporting such body art were a combination of confident bad-asses who were insecure about their body and felt the need to modify it. It was confusing. For a long time I thought only a certain type of…
Beyond Yelling
We have chosen not to spank our children and we aim to parent with respect and gentleness. This is a departure from how we started (though, to be honest, we would have told you we were parenting with respect and gentleness with spanking and yelling because we believed it was necessary) and it has been…
Our Struggle with No Funds = No Fun
One of the most destructive forces to our productivity that we know is an empty bank account. I’m theoretically opposed to the idea that No Funds = No Fun, but a lack of cash is really difficult for us to look past. It robs us of focus, creativity, motivation, and hope, even when we believe…