Remember that campy movie, “Snakes On A Plane,” from 2006? The last few days in this house have been more like “Babies On A Plane,” since we’ve been up to our eyeballs in planning our end-of-year trip to England.
We’ve got our destination (The Cotswolds). We’ve got our dates (my wife’s winter break). We’ve even got [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

Here’s an important question for fellow dads out there: How will you celebrate Father’s Day next week?
Plans among dads I know are mixed. Some are psyched to spend the day engaging in “me time,” whether that means 18 holes at the local golf course, three hours in front of baseball or NASCAR on TV or [...]

The last time Powergirl and I few with L, the baby was six months old and still perfectly content with plopping on our laps for hours at a time. Now, however, the kid is one, and she’s just about as squirmy as a seal out of water.
Naturally, then, we grownups are somewhat wary of taking [...]

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 [...]

NPR did its part to advance thinking about fathers suffering from post-partum depression this week, with an “All Things Considered” story about a recent study on the subject (thanks to my father for the link).
The story, which reported on a study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, analyzed 43 [...]

Over the last few months, friends and family members have told us that sometime around the one-year mark, L would enter into a phase that can best be described as “parroting.” During this phase, they warned, the baby could mimic just about anything Powergirl and I said.
This possibility was daunting; because my wife and I [...]

Fatherhood sparks some interesting discussions between us guys. Case in point: an e-mail conversation I had today with an editor friend of mine.
He and I volleyed a number of messages back and forth, sharing our respective schedules to try and explain how and when we managed to balance work and parent responsibilities. Then he dropped [...]