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 was Isaac Newton, I believe, who pontificated on the relationship between action and reaction. Perhaps dude was referring not to the laws of motion, but instead to the laws of parenthood.
Case in point: L’s recent sleeping patterns. The good news: She’s been going down for the night around 7:15 or so, giving Powergirl and [...]

L’s vocabulary has been expanding exponentially in recent weeks; we estimate she’s adding six to 10 new words each day.
Perhaps her favorite new word: “No.”
At first, this concerned us significantly. Kids going through the Terrible Twos are notorious for talking back in this fashion, and Powergirl and I feared that L had evolved into the [...]

I had to take L with me to the local supermarket today, which means we are once again the proud owners of a giant Mylar balloon. When the baby is involved, you see, supermarket trip = balloon.
Yes, I’m that much of a pushover.
The routine started a few months ago. We were entertaining and I needed [...]

I always wondered whether L would be clingy like other kids.
For the first 13 months of her life, she seemed to shun this common quality, instead displaying a fierce independence about which Powergirl and I could only joke. No, guys, the baby seemed to say, I won’t let you feed me X—either I give it [...]

One of the wonderful treats of fatherhood (and parenthood, I suppose) is to watch these little humans develop free will. When they do stuff on their own volition, it’s adorable and amazing at the same time.
Naturally, however, the practical application of this maturation is fraught with good and bad.
The good: The solo dance and soccer [...]

For me, a native of Long Island, N.Y., vacations to Hawaii used to be all about the sunbathing.
I’d plan my days around prime tanning time, lube up with tanning oil and reposition my body to be perfectly in line with the sun as it streaked across the daytime sky.
Generally speaking, I’d log anywhere from four [...]

The week of L’s first birthday is upon us, and here at the Villano ranch we’ve been spending inordinate amounts of energy thinking about water.
The good news: Today Powergirl took the baby for her first-ever swim lesson at our gym (she loved it and didn’t want to get out of the pool). The bad news: [...]

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 [...]

We’re not sure what kind of person L will be when she grows up, but one thing about the girl’s personality has become abundantly clear: The kid has a healthy sense of humor.
This characteristic has been emerging gradually over the last few days; most of the time, it manifests itself in the form of laughing [...]