Friendship: What is it? Where do we find it? How do we keep it? According to Facebook, a friend is someone we may have met for a minute, added to a list and left to the algorithm. According to Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, friends (like Romans and countrymen, respectively) tend to lend their ears and are often prone to peer pressure. According to my youngest son, friendship is a compass that points to where your heart is, regardless of time or distance. Sorry, Bill, but I’m with the kid on this one. “I’m not tired,” said that same kid, lying through his eyelids, … [Read more...]
Rolling on the River: Life Lessons in Family Travel
By the time you read this I’ll most likely be dry, but at the time of this writing that is not the case. I am something less than wet, having been soaked hours ago, still slightly more than damp. The moisture is a mix of sweat and river water, having spent hours today atop a raft in hot weather and rushing rapids, hours more in a car on roads long and winding. My family is equally saturated, even the youngest — who used the last few moments of the day to dunk himself in the calm, rapids-adjacent waters, disappointed as he was that the boat didn’t flip. However, his skinny body dries faster … [Read more...]
Public Breastfeeding vs. Public Urination: My Ethical Dilemma
Our family’s most memorable summer road trip occurred when our two daughters were quite young -- and quite needy, as it turns out. My wife and I were taking the family to our hometown, a three-hour drive away. The first two hours went smoothly. My 3-month-old drifted between sleep and blank stares, and my 3-year-old napped before starting to watch a movie. We had recently indulged in a minivan with a DVD player, which was unthinkable a few years previous but I admit was wonderful for family trips. Granted, I had explained to my daughter that the mysterious video machine only worked when we … [Read more...]
Family Vacation Tips to Make Your Trips Positively Memorable
Traveling as a family is always memorable, but those memories aren’t always rosy. To get your next family vacation closer to postcard-perfect, I’ve learned a few tricks after traveling with multiple kids regularly, domestically and internationally, for work and pleasure from the baby years up through the tween and teen stages. Set your sights on limited sightseeing It is tempting to try to see and do aaaaaall the things because you’ve come aaaaaall this way and paid aaaaaall that money. You should not, however, because you will run yourself and your kids into the ground. Then all that money … [Read more...]
Mile-High Parenting: This Tip is a Lock for Flying with Young Children
Naturally, after a moment of concern for our daughter's well-being, we did what any responsible parents would do in a crisis: we blamed each other. _________________ Think you know everything about those tiny airplane bathrooms? Think again. When flying with our two young children years ago, my wife and I discovered a little-known but highly valuable feature of those bathrooms, at least on our particular plane. But first, a story. Our two daughters were ages 6 and 3 at the time. Like most parents, we dreaded that anything-can-happen stage of flying with children when wild imaginings of … [Read more...]
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 7
- Next Page »