Triple The Dad

Its Friday, its Summer, and its absolutely gorgeous weather here in suburban Philadelphia. As a result I thought I would pen what I hope is a fun little post about toys. As a Dad of triplets I spend a decent amount of time surrounded by, and playing with, toys. I have some experience in this area, is what I'm saying. The first one compares Legos to Shopkins titled "Shopkins Must Be The Devil."  Hint: Legos win. Don't buy your kids Shopkins. Though the ever wonderful Mrs. Triplet Dad is spot on when she criticized this post for disparaging something my kids love so much. Damn kids. They really are confounding. For instance, I have a son who is totally in love  with the Star Wars characters. Mostly Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. This doesn't differentiate him from pretty much every other almost 5-year-old kids, I realize. What is unique is that he is horrified of the movies, and the bad guys in particular, and hasn't watched more than about 2 minutes of them....

I saw, again, that raising a child from birth to 18 costs somewhere north of $300,000 . That puts me at nearly a cool million. One million dollars over the next 16 or so years. Having raised my triplets almost to the age of 3, I can confirm that a hefty portion of that $300,000 per child cost is diapers and formula.  You can breast feed and pare that number down, and good for you because you'll save something like $25,000. Not exactly chump change, but not exactly living frugally, either. You can try to cut down on diaper costs, but good luck with that. Its pretty much a fixed cost. You can't exactly leave your child in a single diaper all day. That doesn't work out well. You can potty train as early as 1.5 years, but good luck with that, as well. I'm somewhat convinced that potty training during the time when your kid is forming his own opinions about what and when and how he will do things is an evil trick played on parents just to see how far...