Triple The Dad

I was part of a discussion on FB the other day with fellow triplet Dads about divorce.  One of the Dads is headed that way, another is already well down the road, and of course some of our number is already past that point. One of the posters said that the divorce rate for parents of multiples is something on the order of 80 percent.  Could 8-in-10 marriages involving multiples really end in divorce?  The number seems simultaneously impossibly high and entirely legitimate. Eight out of ten. My wife is awesome beyond belief and she deserves the bulk of the credit for keeping this circus running and the lions from eating the trainers (it isn't easy being married to a Super Hero, but that is a post for another time).  Having said that, it hasn't always been easy, on her or me.  During those times, an 80 percent divorce rate seems, well, if not personally relatable, at least a completely reasonable number.  Every kid stresses a marriage and every marria...

The timeline of raising triplets goes something like this, in my experience: The early months  of having triplets blurs by.  You have no sleep, you know you've had coffee, because you are awake, but you can't remember if you ate.  You hear kids crying, even when kids aren't crying; and even when they aren't with you. Year one is fun, but it is still lots of work.  Its like those first years of college, where you are suddenly being challenged in all kinds of new ways, but its all so fun and exciting that who cares.  Its like, well raising Gremlins. By year two , the novelty has worn off.  This is the time when those kids that couldn't handle the excitement of college have dropped out.  But there isn't any dropping out of parenting.  And there is a reason they call it the Terrible Twos - at this age parenting is more like managing a baseball team full of ... um, interesting personalities. And then you hit three years old, and it gets hard...

Are you worried your kid isn't getting enough fruits and vegetables?  How can you not be, right?  I mean, there are thousands of articles about it online and your kid is probably pushing his plateful of vegetables away with only a bit more gusto than he inhales sugars.  And then there are the judging eyes of other Moms and Dads and Grandparents.  It is really, really easy to worry that your kid is falling short of the recommended amount of veggies.  But are you sure? What I call the  Picky Eater Panic  occasionally rears its ugly head even to me when I see my kids wolf down pizza while vegetables sit sadly on their plates.  But its a mostly overblown fear.  The secret truth is that a serving of vegetables for you three-year old isn't that big and your kid is probably easily getting that much.  How much? About a quarter cup. That is the word from earthsbest.co m. Below are the serving sizes for three- to six-year-old kids (with the ...

Working from home isn't always everything it is cracked up to be.  For instance, I got the stomach bug this week, and one of the disadvantages of working from home is that its hard to justify taking the day off.  I could never have made it in to work and functioned Tuesday.  But working from home means I can work laying in my bed.  Sure, I could take a day off, but do I really want to?  Why use a perfectly good day off on being sick when I can stay in my PJs, make it a light day, and save the day off for some nice warm day in April. That warm day is not today.  But I'm glad I was feeling better. Of course, one of the advantages of working from home is that sometimes, this is my lunch break: (scroll down for more) Snow Angel - Before Snow Angel - After And this is the view from my office: Cold, but quite the view. This is the "team" meeting.. And a trip to the swings with the wife and triplets is the day's "team meeting." We h...

Read enough parenting books and blogs and you'll inevitably come across this piece of advice: You shouldn't try to reason with toddlers.  They simply don't have the comprehension skills, emotion-management skills, expectation management skills or time-management skills to reason or rationalize. And surely, anyone who has watched as their kids melt down because someone cut their sandwich the wrong way, or because one parent or another pushed the elevator button first - the HORROR! - will realize that this is true. If only it were this easy... It is also advice I ignore.  Not entirely ignore, mind you, but largely ignore.  Because its a parenting TRAP and not entirely true.  Instead, I think you should totally talk to your kids above their cognition level.  What you should not  do is expect them to understand.  At least not right away. You see, I've found that if you talk to your kid like a baby or like the two-year-old child they are, the pass...

I talk to my kids a lot - a LOT - about taking deep breathes and the need to relax.  I do this mainly when they are frustrated with my wife and I or when one of the other kids take their toys or when, you know, the apple isn't perfectly apple-shaped.  But they also see me doing stretches and Yoga type stuff and taking deep breaths myself. But sometimes my emotions get the best of me.  I had one of those types of days this week.  One of the days where despite all my adultness, the pressures of life and child-rearing get the best of me.  And sometimes, my adult knowledge will lead me to see things in a different light than you see it.  Sometimes, I'm sad to say, kids, I'm going to fail. You will fall, as one of you did recently, for no obvious reasons in that funny way that you sometimes do.  It will be a short, soft fall and I'll know you are OK because I saw the fall.  All my training in falls and physics will tell me you are OK. I'll laug...

In one of the crazier traditions we apparently exported across the nation, Pennsylvanians predict how much longer winter will last by whether a groundhog sees his shadow on a specific day in February.  Its a big deal; the Washington Post covers it.  Amateurs in other states are now doing it, resulting in them having their ears bitten off. That groundhog saw his s hadow Monday, so I'm told we are in for a lot more winter.  Six more weeks of it, to be specific. We do this every year, and pretty much every year we get the same result: six more weeks of winter.  An editor I used to work with often pointed out that giant television and photography lights kind of pushes you toward one outcome over another.  I guess when you rely on a groundhog for your weather predictions, you aren't picky about such things. There is even a "culturally significant" film starring Bill Murray based around it.  In the movie, Murray's character repeats the...