The Villano family spent last night in the guest cabin at a well-known Napa Valley winery. Since the place didn’t have a crib, we brought L’s travel Pack-N-Play, an old-school model that’s about twice the size of the ones they sell today.
As always, L took the opportunity to make us laugh. Hysterically.
It usually happens when [...]

Thanks to an unexpected turn of events this morning, I am suffering from what I like to call PTSD, also known as Post Tantrum Stress Disorder.
The tantrum was a doozie, a 30-minute episode that started out of nothing (she didn’t want to brush her teeth) and ended only after I gave L a long while [...]

Considering that I fell asleep at my computer four times in six nights last week (and considering that I’m writing this at 3 a.m.), I’d say it’s high time something about my work schedule (watch the baby all day; work late into the night) changed.
And so it is with great excitement this week that I [...]

Most of the time my daughter is utterly fearless, barreling into new experiences with unflagging curiosity. Recently, however, particularly after my Thursday-Friday work trip to Denver, the baby has exhibited a new personality trait, too: She’s getting scared.
Literally. As in, she says, “Scared, scared,” and clutches me for dear life.
I wrote about the very first [...]

Generally speaking, L has been a maternal mood of late. This doesn’t mean she’s ignoring me completely, it just means she’s gravitating toward Powergirl and the other women in her life. This weekend, for instance, whenever the baby wanted something, it was “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” or “Grandma,” her name for my mom.
Daddy, it turned out, [...]

Tomorrow is my thirty-fifth birthday. My stance on such occasions, however, has changed completely since L was born.
Previously, though I wasn’t a real present guy, I reveled in “me” on birthdays, doing precisely what I wanted to and very little of what everybody else had in mind (unless, of course, everybody else wanted to celebrate [...]

It’s been five days or so since we switched back to Daylight Standard Time, and despite the dwindling amounts of sunshine, these have been the five longest days of my year.
Never mind I’ve been working crazy hours. Forget, for a moment, that we’re refinancing.
Really, the parachute-sized bags under my eyes (and the Olympus Mons of [...]

L’s independence is growing as rapidly as her fingernails these days. Before we went to Vegas for the weekend (to see the resulting story, click here), she was going through a clingy phase. Now, however, she’s perfectly content doing stuff on her own.
When we “meddle” in her newfound solo-living, she’s also content expressing her frustration [...]

Mondays in this house used to be a joyous occasion, full of excitement and anticipation over a being that defies description: the garbage truck.
L would wake up stoked. From the moment she looked out the window and spotted our cans on the street, she’d yammer on and on about the garbage truck. Every time she [...]

It would be interesting to interface with developmental psychologists about when most children begin to develop free will. Is it around Kindergarten age? It is not until elementary school?
Whatever the science would say, we have a statistical anomaly in our midst here with L.
Still two weeks shy of her 17-month birthday, the girl frequently displays [...]