Powergirl and I have settled into a nightly routine with L: a war of attrition to get the baby to sleep.
The offensive usually begins around 9 p.m., when the obviously cranky child begins to wail. Powergirl usually takes the first attack, turning L on her stomach and cradling her like Emmitt Smith cradled the football, [...]

While comic book geeks gathered in San Diego this week to celebrate their nerdiness at the annual Comic-Con convention, I discovered a convention designed to celebrate something much different and more pertinent to my everyday life: The At-Home Dad’s Convention at the Durham Museum in downtown Omaha, Neb.
This year’s “Dadfest,” slated for Oct. 8-10, is [...]

I’ve never really liked Jenny McCarthy.
When she hosted that MTV show about dating, her “funny” faces inspired me to yell at my television. I hated her in her eponymous TV show, and the one after that, titled, simply, “Jenny.” I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t even care for her Playboy centerfolds.
But nothing, I [...]

Someday, I hope to inspire my daughter to practice good living by treating people kindly, using proper grammar, eating lots of vegetables and rooting for the New York Yankees.
So far, however, it’s clear that one of the only things I inspire her to do currently is poop.
I came to this conclusion after some (not-so) scientific [...]

By now we’ve all heard English poet Thomas Haynes Bayly’s line about absence making the heart grow fonder. Yesterday I experienced this sensation for the first time about L, as I was away for her for a total of nine hours—the most lengthy separation since her birth.
The longing caught me by surprise. I have read [...]

As far as 8-week-old infants go, L is a stay-at-home daddy’s dream. She’s more or less easy-going. She smiles a lot. And she loves to hang on my lap while we watch baseball. The two of us spend the better parts of every day together, and I cherish every moment.
That said, I admit it: I [...]

For almost all of us new fathers, parenthood is uncharted territory—like Antarctica, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the soft yet supple buttocks of Evangeline Lilly. Well here, my friends, are the top ten signs you’re a new dad, presented Letterman-style in descending order. Got one to add? Feel free to do so in [...]

My buddy’s question was innocent enough: “Yo, what are you up to?”
The truth was that as I chatted on the phone with my long-distance pal, I was standing in the garage, zipping each of my wife’s nursing bras into small mesh bags to protect them from the plastic mixer-upper-thingy in our washing machine. I had [...]

Dear Stanford University admissions committee:
I’m writing on behalf of my daughter, L, who yesterday demonstrated that she is worthy of acceptance into the undergraduate class of 2031, and that she is, without question, an utter and complete genius.
Let me paint for you a picture. L, in all of her 23 inches, sat in her vibrating [...]

You never realize just how loud the world is until you’re pushing a sleeping baby around in a stroller.
Automobile engines. Blaring radios. Drunken homeless guys. Barking dogs. Street sweepers. Garbage trucks. Even that loud Valley Girl who yammers incessantly into her cell phone. Taken individually, each of these culprits is merely a nuisance. Together, they [...]