Ever since I finished the testing for my doctorate (starting with the summer of woes and progressing through late last semester) I realized that I had completely stopped playing music. One of the things I probably haven’t shared on here is that I play a musical instrument. My parents were not fond of a grade school music instructor so I never did music in grade school. It wasn’t until I turned sixteen that I remarked “I want to play guitar.” It turned out to be a great thing. I took six months of classical guitar lessons from a really nice … Continue reading →

This past week my family and I decided to get an early start on the upcoming holiday season. We got in a car the day before Thanksgiving and selected a Christmas tree for our home. This is the first year we were going to have a real tree in our home for the holiday season. Last year we happily purchased a three foot tall fake tree with lights. There is a photograph somewhere of my holding our very young son in front of the tree as he stared wide eyed looking at the small lights. As he is older this … Continue reading →

After breakfast this morning, I sent my son back to his room to make his bed. I started cleaning up the breakfast dishes, and by the time that I was done, I was somewhat surprised that he hadn’t finished making his bed. I walked back to see what the hold up was, when I heard grunting coming form his open door. I peeked through the open door to see what he was doing to exert himself so much. He was on all fours, holding his fitted sheet near one of the corners of the mattress. He gathered himself up and … Continue reading →

My son is really into martial arts. He’s constantly spinning, jumping kicking, punching, and defeating imaginary foes. (I think they are usually Decepticons) When we finish a crate of eggs, I let him destroy the egg crate that they came in with kick, chops, and punches, as if it were a piece of wood or a block of cement. He must be Bruce Lee in his mind’s eye. Recently a new program debuted on the History Channel called Human Weapon. In it, two fighters travel around the world studying the traditional martial arts of the countries that they visit. After … Continue reading →

My oldest child went away from home for the first time this past week. She went to a sleep away camp several hours away. Even months before camp started, it was really hard to get used to the idea of my little baby growing up and going away. She was incredibly excited to go, however, even though it got harder and harder for me to bear the thought. In fact, she was so excited, that she literally counted down the days for months before she was going to leave. Fortunately, the time while she was gone was not totally unbearable. … Continue reading →

If you have any of my blogs in the past, you probably know that I have five kids, and that the last two came as a matching pair two years ago. Now my twins are not identical, (they are in fact fraternal) but they look awfully similar. In fact if they are not standing side by side together, I have to be no further than five or six feet away to tell them apart. Even then, if I am looking at the first twin Emily, I’m not really sure who it is that I’m looking at. If the other twin, … Continue reading →

My wife and I certainly have our hands full. Between our jobs and raising five state of the art sleep interference devices, we find that we have very little time just for ourselves. As I’m sure you very well know, parenting is a 24/7 gig. Anyway, last night we had finally gotten the kids off to bed, and were enjoying a rare, quiet, adult conversation in the living room. An actual real live conversation were there were no paper dolls, Transformers, My Little Pony, or Little Einsteins mentioned at all. Suddenly, our conversation was interrupted by sleep interference device #2, … Continue reading →

I was walking down the hallway past the bathroom when I heard a strange voice. It was a child’s voice that was trying its best to be kind of low and gravelly, and I paused outside the door for a moment to listen. After a minute, I heard the same voice answering. (This time without trying to sound low and gravelly) It was my four year old daughter. I couldn’t understand the words through the door, but I could hear the tone and pace of what was being said. It was clear to me that my daughter’s gravelly voice was … Continue reading →

We’ve all been on the receiving end of some “special” phrases from our children, but this one has to my all time favorite. When my first child was still a toddler, she was very verbal, and could communicate very effectively at quite a young age. She was also very literal. She would follow the letter of the parental law rather than the spirit of the parental law. She was therefore VERY talented at finding loopholes in the directions that my wife or I gave her. This development was actually amusing to us at first. I was in fact mildly pleased … Continue reading →