After a long night with L (she was up from 2 to 4 a.m. in major tooth pain) and an even longer morning of work, I escaped for an hour today to grab a quiet lunch in town.
The escapade started out swimmingly. No traffic between home and one of my favorite local Mexican restaurants. Grabbed [...]

It’s amazing how much we parents tolerate in the name of love. Poopy diapers and cranky afternoons are the least of it; my personal least favorite is the act of cleaning up the various messes that L leaves throughout the day.
Normally, I share these duties with my wonderful wife. Considering that she left this evening [...]

Leave it to L to find stuff I thought I had lost forever. The object of her eureka moment this afternoon: The only foul ball I’ve ever caught during a live Major League Baseball game (which, oddly enough, happened to be exactly ten years ago today, at the old Yankee Stadium, on July 6, 2000).
Some [...]

Heading into this week, perhaps my biggest shortcoming as a father had been my inability to perform every component of L’s pre-bed sequence by myself. Sure, I had managed each of the tasks adequately, but never all of them in succession, and never in the same night.
That is, until Wednesday.
Tonight, while flying solo with the [...]

As you readers know, my wife and I had a terrible experience on a recent United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Lihue, Kauai. In a nutshell, the plane had no changing tables and we were told, basically, to improvise. Infuriated by this heartless policy, I wrote a letter of complaint to United last week. [...]

Now that she’s a strapping one-year-old, L has decided she’s tired of sitting (or laying) still when Powergirl and I change her diapers.
As such, the process has de-evolved into a sort of baby wrestling match; a game in which she tries to see how many times she can flip from her back to her belly [...]

Following our United Airlines/changing table debacle from earlier this month (still no response to my complaint letter, in case you’re keeping score at home), my angst is growing about the way airlines treat parents with young children.
All week, friends have been emailing me with sob stories about their own experiences on airplanes without changing tables.
Then, [...]

The following letter is a completely serious complaint about our recent flights to and from Kauai, and I formally filed it with United Airlines earlier today. This is only the beginning of my campaign against the airline on this issue. Trust me.
To Whom It May Concern:
I am a travel writer, Mileage Plus member (No. xxxxxxxxxxx) [...]

I spent most of my Friday night installing a metal gate in the doorway between our kitchen and our living room. This means we’ve taken a giant leap toward making our house “baby-proof.”
For me, a self-admitted neurotic freak, the rest of this process likely will be incredibly fulfilling.
Over the next week or so, I’ll install [...]

Between a crazy workweek and an increasingly demanding baby, my hygiene has suffered this week, to say the least.
I wore my pajamas (mesh shorts and a t-shirt) all day Monday and Thursday. I didn’t brush my teeth at all on Tuesday. And, in perhaps the most disgusting development, I haven’t shaved since May 12, making [...]