Without making any general announcement, my partner decided to put a couple of presents aside as “Christmas Eve” presents. Given the thorough inspection that every package put out for Christmas gets from the kids, of course it only took them .04 microseconds to realize that a couple of packages were marked “Christmas Eve Present”, and […]

With the kids finally off quarantine (only one got sick, but the other two were excluded from school just in case) we can get back to the business of daily life, which this time of year means Christmas. Which means shopping.
We don’t give the kids much of an allowance, and usually they haven’t worried too […]

I absolutely love Sherman Alexie, so when I noticed just now that he’d written a new book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian I ordered it right away.  And when I saw it was a book for younger readers (grade 7 - 10, according to Amazon) I knew I had to write it […]

Readers of StepDadding might be interested in a post I wrote for lifehack.org as a kind of remedy for the rampant consumerism of “Black Friday”: Teaching Kids Charity and Clarity with Pre-Christmas Cleaning. The idea is one I got from my brother and sister-in-law (and they got it from who-knows-where) — go through your kids’ […]

I’ve been on a bit of a Neil Gaiman kick lately, since Stardust came out and I read and enjoyed Coraline. Although I’ve been way too busy to read much more (I picked up M is for Magic and another Gaiman book about a month ago) I did have a chance to listen to […]

This picture frame keychain is an amazing gift for dads (among others): the TAO 1.5-Inch Digital Keychain Frame. I got my dad one for his birthday in August and everyone oohed and aahed over it so much he barely had time to play with it himself! The software allows you to drag and drop pictures […]