I’m going to come right out and admit that I had a meltdown on Saturday. I had just picked up the older boys from a friend’s birthday party and was relating to them how their father and I had taken apart the trailer in their absence. We were expecting to just replace the wood, but [...]

Yesterday, Kathy’s guest post described the behavior of parents who have ambitions for their children. According to Kathy, “The problem with most parents today is that they tend to force on their children ambitions that were once upon a time theirs, ambitions that went unachieved for lack of support, motivation and/or the lack of opportunity.” [...]

When TechnoBoy and The Mercenary were little we refused to tell them who was older. This wasn’t intended as any kind of sociological experiment; we were just trying to keep the playing field balanced. TechnoBoy, who was born first by 5 minutes, was smaller physically. That discrepancy has increased over the years, to the point [...]

A theme I keep coming back to in this blog is the disconnect between my work ethic and the boys’. I am a workaholic. Plain and simple, I’d rather be pursuing a task than sitting still. The older I get, the more I want to be completing things. Don’t tell the boys, but I’ve been [...]

There are a lot of things that mystify me when it comes to my boys; the need to destroy-ahhh, I mean disassemble everything they touch, the constant violence, persistent bathroom humor…ugh. The biggest difficulty has been our differences regarding work. I think work is good. They do not. It’s as simple as that, really. Unfortunately, [...]

A battle that the older boys and I keep returning to is pretty straightforward: I think they should work. They disagree. Early in school, we struggled (A LOT) over learning issues. They’ve definitely grown past those, but somewhere along the line the picked up the idea that life should always and only be fun. The [...]