Triple The Dad

Something pretty amazing happens every year at this time. Back to school pics. Facebook is absolutely flooded with them. At least it is if you are of a certain child-bearing age. Its pretty much a right of passage. First day of Kindergarten, first bus ride (EVER!), first day of high school, college drop off, first job, first day on the job wearing a blue shirt, etc. If  you send kids to school, you almost have to take a pic at this point and post it on Facebook, complete with Pinterest-cutesy sign, or it didn't happen. Que the 100 likes you'll inevitably receive on that pic. If you aren't posting these, you might as well not have kids. Pics or it didn't happen.  Or maybe you just really care about your kids. Because think about what those pictures really are.Those cutesy "first day of school" pictures are really "I sent my kid to go get sick" pictures. After we sent our kids off to school this year (obligatory pics take and pos...

1) Babies are essentially fool proof. They will feed when they want, walk when they want, talk when they want. Almost nothing you do will change that. You can worry endlessly over this and that and the other, but relax and you'll have a better time. 2) Who you are, genetically speaking, probably matters a lot more than what you do. At conception your kid has the genes to have a certain IQ. You can nurture that or degrade it, but otherwise, its fairly set. Your kid's genes also affect whether he will be driven or lack focus. Twin studies confirm this. So you if your genes connect in the right way and you get a smart, driven kid out of the dice roll, pretty much nothing you can do will change that. 3) Your kid faces more of a risk of injury from being a passenger in a car than from vaccines. Vaccinate your kids. 4) You'll get an amazing amount of advice. Notice I didn't say amazing advice. Pretty much everyone who is anyone, especially if they have or ever had kids,...

Let me kick this off by saying my kids are normal, well adjusted children who are awesome as well as being great learners. They are some of the most polite kids you will ever meet. Literally, people come up to us on almost every adventure out and compliment us on how well behaved our children are. Honestly, I think some of it is lowered expectations. I think most of them just expect triplets to behave like little monsters running around tasting other people's food at eateries and wildly running down the aisles of grocery stores knocking stuff off the shelves. So when ours behave like perfect little people, they are shocked. It is a point of pride among my wife and I. But sometimes, you can't win for trying. For instance. Each of our kids are a Kindle Fire they can play on (before you go to comment about screen time, they use them during "quiet time"). They are magicians on them. They teach themselves how to play games; they research new games; they have learned ...

This is going to be a short one. Partly because its hot as I write this - like 95 and humid hot - and partly because there isn't much more to say than what I'm going to say. If you've been following along with me, you know that as a good parent, I have certain opinions on education I question whether rote memorization is a good thing , I appreciate a good reality-based  education , and as a result I really don't care if cursive d ies a quick painful death. What does that have with today's post? It has to do with the kind of education I want  my kids to get in school rather than pointlessly memorizing the presidents in order. I recently saw the following headline on WebMd:  6M Drink Water Containing Toxic Chemicals: Report Which admittedly sounds scary. I mean, just look at that headline. Six million! That is a lot of people. And they are drinking water- such a basic necessity! - full of toxic chemicals. Toxic ones. Its right there in the headline. Chemicals...

If you are like me, you really enjoying working out. But lets face it, almost none of you are like me. You likely aren't 6'2"; you almost certainly don't have triplets; and  most importantly, you probably don't like working out. Approximately 140% of everyone  made some kind health/workout related New Year resolution we have since forgotten. I'm no personal trainer, and I'm not a licensed physician or anesthesiologist, But if you want to get in the best shape possible in the shortest amount of time possible - a must for triplet parents - try  Keelo . What I like: Quick routines : sometimes as short as 9 minutes, but as many as 20. It is, as you may have guessed, HIIT (high intensity interval training). The "quick" is important when you have a full-time job and triplets. Customization : tell the app what you have available; it tailors your workout. Have dumbbells and jump rope? It will push exercise routines featuring that equipment. Havi...

I hate the Olympics for all the reasons I stated here . I'm just not sure you can be a good person and root for such an awful occasion. Still, I find myself recording events, skipping past the awful commentary to get to the races, explaining to kids that they have  watch Michael Phelps because he is the greatest swimmer they will ever see, and rooting along with my kids for the "pretty girl" - gymnast Laurie Hernandez. Before you jump all over me, we don't emphasis looks. I'll mention that a particular act seems hard, or that the athlete must have practiced a lot and worked really hard to accomplish something. That is my parenting style: I compliment the work, effort and time it took to do something. I didn't come up with the nickname. We were watching gymnastics and one of the kids said "she is pretty." It was probably my daughter, because she is always noticing people's eyes and marking them as "pretty." And as kids will do, that ...

I hate the Olympics. I'm not sure exactly when it started. I remember loving them at one point. My parents absolutely adore them, so the love affair probably sprouted in my childhood. Back then the Berlin Wall stood tall and Soviet Russia was a very real threat. We were not long removed from school children hiding under desks to avoid nuclear holocaust. Rooting for the U.S. bordered on a moral duty. I can recall checking the morning's papers to see the medal count. But at some point it all became too much. Too much gross nationalism; too much overhyped hoopla; too much doping; too much controversy; too much rewarding hosting duties to cities clearly incapable of the job; too much displacing poor people so that relatively rich people can participate in a sport ; just too much. I see people on FB who post constantly about the plight of the poor in this country and who have been on humanitarian missions expressing glee and delight in the Olympics. I'm not sure you can be a...