Last weekend we took a trip to the Cleveland Metroparks Rainforest with our friends Beth and Dwayne and their two little ones, Riley and Lilah (or as Dom calls them, “Wiley and Ya-ya”). As an aside, the Rainforest is fantastic for older toddlers. Everything is easily accessible and open, and it only takes about an [...]

“Oh, he’s calm. . .calm like a bomb” 
While my marriage may be a democracy, my relationship with my son is much closer to what I like to refer to as a “benign dictatorship.” As any good dictator knows, it’s important to suppress the will of the proletariat to prevent an uprising. In this, the first [...]

So for everybody I work with who reads this blog (read: the people who have the power to fire me), I’d like to apologize up front for the rather vulgar punch-line of this, my first post of 2010. I ask for mercy only on the basis that this is a true story and simply [...]

My son has been really into books lately. He’ll sit there and play with them, flipping through the pages, eventually finding one he’d like to be read out loud.
He’ll bring it over, hold it up in the air until I pick him up and start reading it to him. He absolutely loves [...]

Gymboree is a fun place to take kids for excercise, but it’s not so fun for parents.

“You” 
Dom has a fun new game where he randomly shouts out animal names and then humiliates me by making me act them out for his own twisted amusement. (Just for the record, what the hell sound does a giraffe make? It’s keeping me up at night.) Anyway, I try to entice Dominic into acting out [...]

I’m writing tonight about something very near and dear to my heart, and if I ramble on and make no sense, or if you disagree with me, well that’s too damn bad.
As you know, I lost my youngest son Jack almost 4 months ago to a rare genetic heart arrythmia, and yesterday my wife and [...]

I’m back to give a quick post and an update on the results of the genetic testing that has been done on myself, Lauren and Sam. Unfortunately, our worst nightmare has come true and Sam has the same genetic mutation of Long QT Type 3 that Jack suffered from. Neither Lauren or I suffer from [...]

Babies and children can be a frusterating and aggrivating lot, but not matter how mad you get they can always do something to pull you right out of it.

 
I thought Friday was the night. Conditions were perfect. Dom picked his Elmo Potty Time Video to watch before bed, Kerry watched him chug two cups of water before I got home from work, and I was feeling lucky. Conditions were perfect.
Right as Elmo’s dad was having a little pee-pee party for Elmo, Kerry [...]