Posted December 24, 2008

Last weekend, Molly went to New York to see a friend, taking Larkin along. They drove away at 4 on Saturday, and I didn't see them again until Sunday night at 10, when I carried Larkin, asleep and clinging to my neck, back up to her room.

Thirty hours of freedom, all for me. The time stretched out in front of me like an enormous cake. Where to bite first?

Biology teaches us that the freed parent will… Read More

A confession. Want to know the one thing above all others that makes me feel like a failure with Larkin? It's her diet. What she eats – mostly, what she doesn't.

The frustration came to a head on Thanksgiving. Molly and I had 15 people here for a potluck extravaganza. The dining room table was loaded with dishes: ham, mashed potatoes, red cabbage, honeyed carrots, baked beans, broccoli casserole, salads, quiches, and on and on. And there stood Larkin, surveying… Read More

Am I an Überparent? The other day I read a New Yorker article, called "The Child Trap," about the phenomenon of "overparenting," formerly known as "spoiling." This is the much-maligned way we boomer and post-boomer moms and dads ruin our kids by ladling too much attention all over them. Think of it as a parental comedy of errors: take the never-say-no fallacy, add the center-of-the-universe mistake, toss in violin lessons, write your kid's college essay, and bingo —… Read More

Can I call time out on the serious for a moment and discuss how strange, how surprising, how hilarious it can be to talk with a two-and-three-quarters-year-old? Sometimes conversation with Larkin has this Abbott-and-Costello, "Who's on first?" quality. Other times it's way more Dada...as in the surreal, Tristan Tzara kind of Dada.

Usually she isn't trying to be funny. It's just the language machine, cranking into high gear in a child her age, producing backfires and wheeling around in wild circles.… Read More

This summer, a great job offer fell into my lap. Just like that: a gilded box, dropping from the heavens and landing right smack in front of me.

Turns out the box had been sent by someone I knew from — of all places — the playground. A fellow father I'd met on three successive Sunday mornings last spring, each of us with toddler in one hand and New York Times in the other. The kids played, the dads talked. We… Read More

First things first — the EPT was negative. So for now anyway, we're still one and done.

Next, thanks to everyone who posted or emailed to offer encouragement (and to suggest that Molly fire her OBGYN!). Your words were funny, wise, and provocative. One old friend sent this advice:

Rand, Larkin's childhood is going to be completely different from yours. Embrace that. Don't try to duplicate your own experience. The life you two have chosen is not one of a doctor and… Read More