I don’t really know what the most pressing question is for parenting a toddler. There are so many important issues a parent must deal with in this day and age. Addressing these things can truly take strategy and consideration: Is your toddler eating a properly balanced diet? Is your toddler receiving the right amount of sleep? How do you instill the right values in your toddler? How do you get your toddler to stop throwing temper tantrums? I am sure there are thousand other questions that are on the same level. I can however tell you one question that is definitely not on the imperative question list, though it is frequently asked: “What is the proper sequence for showing your children the Star Wars movies?” A slightly related question might be: “What is the proper age to begin showing your child the Star Wars movies?” I’ve been asked these questions on multiple occasions, by many people. The talk has obviously flared up again recently with the upcoming movie, or something. My answer to these questions typically revolves around the idea that I will not show them to my son. At this point I am met with a scoff or a snort of derision, and I immediately understand what non-sports fans must feel. I truly am happy for any blogger friends who were part of release, and premier activities for the upcoming movie. I know what I felt like walking away from meeting professional athletes, or going to a game. It truly is an awesome feeling. But, I fall into the tiny sliver of the human race that believes the Star Wars movies were wildly overrated, and wholly unworthy of the media attention the franchise receives. They’re good movies, but by no means the best movie series of my lifetime. You know how excited the fanatics are about seeing the upcoming Force Awakens movie? That’s how excited I am about the day that I don’t have a Facebook feed stuffed with Darth Vader memes, and pledges not to spoil the movie for those unlucky enough to have not seen it yet. All of this is to say that I just don’t care. Jar-Jar ruined any warm feelings I might have had for the original three as a child. And to be honest, I wasn’t all that excited before Jar-Jar was on the scene. If my son stumbles on these movies when he grows older and likes them, more power to him. But I don’t cherish the idea of showing them to him as some sort of right of passage. Honestly, Meg likes science fiction more than I do. She grew up in a family watching Star-Trek, while I was more at home watching...

I like the holidays. I do. The period between Thanksgiving and Christmas has been a great time to enter into a food induced coma, and then toss up a New Year’s resolution to climb your way out. It’s also a great time to slow down, and enjoy time with family and friends.  For most of my adult life, my wife and I lived in relatively small apartments with very little room to put things. I never liked the “stuff on top of stuff” decorating motif, so I became pegged as the Scrooge, and labeled anti-Christmas. I am also pro-Thanksgiving and never cared much for all that Black Friday entails. No thank you. I am not too big of fan of the fact every retail outlet becomes infinitely more crowded for an entire month. I am also going to enjoy this window before we’re shopping for the latest and greatest toy. But I think the traditional, giving themes of the holiday are well worth the effort, and I hope to instill some of that onto Jamie. Which brings me to the Friday after Thanksgiving. It’s a day I’ve typically dreaded. While I’m not out shopping, it’s the day when the family pressure is the strongest to bring out those Christmas decorations. We have a little bit more room in our house for miscellaneous red stuff, but decorating is still a tough row to hoe, between the kid and the dog. Things are a bit different now. Jamie’s had some sort of toddler sixth sense, possessing the ability to detect the nearing approach of Christmas since the end of Halloween. The pine tree air freshener in my car became “Daddy’s Christmas tree.” Hearing about Christmas every day following Halloween always makes me cringe a bit. And then I saw what this holiday means to him. My son is nearly 3, so it’s the first Christmas he’ll start to make sense of. We unpacked the Christmas tree, and the kid jumped for joy at the idea of decorating it. He barely slept a wink for his nap. We opened a box of ornaments we’ve been giving him over the last couple years, and he all but memorized who gave him which ornament, stopping to thank the person, even if they weren’t in the room. On Saturday morning following Thanksgiving he began opening and closing the doors on an advent calendar. I tried to explain it didn’t start for a few more days, but all he could say is “I want to do it now!!” As an infant we were able to buy his Christmas presents in front of him, but that window is most definitely gone. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. It’s going to...

Happy Thanksgiving a day early, from a 2-year-old who says he wants turkey and carrots, but is emphatic about not wanting mashed potatoes. “I really, really don’t like mashed potatoes,” he insists. As his parents, I can assure you he is not divulging new information, but rather information he deems highly important. We’ve learned the hard way a number of times about his disdain for mashed potatoes. Now, Thanksgiving comes with a tinge of anxiety about being fed a food he doesn’t like. More food for dad. We began the process of telling him about the holiday at the beginning of the week, and now it is his sole focus. Yesterday morning he was upset with his mother when she informed him he could not “have Thanksgiving” for breakfast. He wanted carrots and Chex mix. He’s still pretty iffy about the idea of turkey, but is greatly looking forward to the stuffing. I am really excited to hear Jamie’s recipe for cooking a turkey some day, but so far he just says “I don’t know,” when asked. I am sure there will be some interesting answers (that will ensure he will stay away from the stove a long, long time) on that front. It’s no surprise he is obsessing over this week’s holiday. Up until a few days ago, he’s still been asking if he can trick or treat at the neighbor’s houses. I’m convinced the world would be a better place if you could randomly trick or treat from any given neighbor on any given day of the year. I like Jamie’s rendition of Halloween, but unfortunately it’s not how it works. He’ll probably want to “Have Thanksgiving” for quite a few days into December, but he’s already sensing Christmas. I recently put up a pine tree air freshener in my car and every time he gets in with me he tells me how much he loves my Christmas tree. He’ll probably join the legions who want to celebrate this holiday before we pick the next. People celebrating birthdays around Jamie will appreciate this extended celebratory attitude that he has. His mother’s birthday extended for a few extra days. He even asked his mother a day early if she had her birthday card. Suffice it to say I won’t be doing my Christmas shopping with Jamie in...

The world is a complicated place. I’m not even talking about what’s going on in the Middle East. I’m talking about what’s going on under my own roof, and the perceptions of a 2-year-old. Here are 17 of the most ridiculous things my toddler believes: When dad tells him mommy’s not home, it’s a challenge. If he stands at the top of the stairs and yells “MOMMMMMYYYYYY WHERE ARRRRRRRRE YOOOOOOOUUUUU?????” loud enough and long enough, he might just get the answer he was hoping for. Open doors were meant to close. Closed doors were meant to open. Ceiling fans are sky spiders. Loud jets are sky monsters. All movies and television are animated. If it’s not animated, it’s a commercial, and we need to go back to previous programming. If he screams “I DONT WANT TO GO PEEPEE!!” loud enough, we won’t take him to the bathroom, or he will no longer need to go. It’s unclear as to which. People who sit at the dinner table and eat something different than what you are eating are inherently evil. Mom and dad had a lifetime of privacy. Why should they be entitled to any more? How crazy is it that it could be snowing at the front of the house and the back of the house at the same time? Apparently very crazy. Just because he ate it and loved it yesterday, doesn’t mean he won’t kick and scream and throw a tantrum to avoid eating it today. Any major sporting event on TV is the best time possible to convey “I WANNA WATCH A MOVIEEE!!!!” over and over at least 200 times. This is especially true for Blackhawks playoffs, Cubs playoffs, and Bears games. The more questionable the taste, the better the food looks on the ground. The most fun things to play with: cords, outlets, boxes, packaging, or anything that shouldn’t be on the floor. Then toys. Books are fun. Especially when you can rip, bend or pull out the pages. They need to be interactive. Someone may walk up at any given point and ask them if they want to hear the most obnoxious sound in the world. Screams need to be practiced and perfected to be ready for that moment. The best way to show affection for someone is to touch the grossest thing possible, and then touch their face. Bonus! My toddler also believes that an obese man with a red suit and a grey beard is going to squeeze through a small hole in our roof to give him presents. It gets richer and richer, and some of these things you just can’t correct. Not...

As head of the household, there were a few things I wanted to convey. So I hijacked dad’s blog to do it. It really is a nice life, this being a toddler. No matter what I do, no matter what kind of mess I make, there’s always someone there to clean it up. Let’s call them the servants. They try to pressure me, persuade me to clean my mess up-but I smile, laugh, feign a lacking vocabulary, and slowly back away. What they don’t know is I’ve been silently paying attention to every conversation they’ve had, since I was a tad over six months old. I understand what they are talking about. When they ask me to clean something up, I simply shake my head. “Me? Do any kind of household work?” I scoff to myself “Of course not. There’s plenty of time for that later. I’m 2.” My dad thinks playing “blocks away” as he likes to put it, will be as fun as actually playing blocks. Not without a little imagination. That’s why I like to turn it into a high stakes basketball game and pretend I’m Shaquille O’Neil from the free throw line, with a less than 50 percent free throw average. One at a time, I either make them in the box, or I don’t. I can milk this game for the rest of the night, given the option. Funny thing – dad thinks he’s the head of the household, but mom and I know better. He might not even be the head servant, but I’ll leave that for mom to decide. Just the other day I had dad running to the fridge three times to find me more to eat with dinner. He kept asking for specifics, but the simple demand “MORE FOOOOOD!!!” kept him busy for a while, while I smiled at mom. Dad laughs and jokes that he is going to hand the phone to me when the next telemarketer calls, asking for the head of the household, but I think he laughs because he knows it’s true. If he didn’t laugh he’d probably cry. What they don’t understand is that I’m bored. The toys, books, movies, dog, cat and other distractions around here simply aren’t enough. When I dump my blocks on the ground, I want to play with my crayons. When my crayons hit the floor there’s nothing left to do but ask the servants read books. Sometimes I feel like they don’t really understand me, but that’s not my problem. I simply resort to a handy temper tantrum. Every kid should know how to throw one. It’s not just dad. Sometimes mommy likes to remind me that she’s in...

Right now Jamie’s biggest concerns are what he is going to eat for dinner and alerting his parents before bowel movements. After all, he’s 2. The food he wanted 30 seconds ago may no longer be a suitable choice for his refined palate. Mustering up the volume and tears is the best way for him to convey the urgency when it comes to telling his parents about the need to pee. But things are changing. The continuous influx of “Why?” assures us of that. The phase of parenting that is solely about sustaining life is over. It’s about building up interests and explaining the world. People, books and cartoons shape his world. It’s about fostering a natural sense of curiosity at a young age. Today, the questions aren’t so complicated. But the world will continue to be a more complicated place by the time he wants to know about it. On a good day, I wonder how to explain that the local baseball team hasn’t won a World Series in 100 years, and just how long of time that is. I wonder how to explain that people can make religious judgments based on the decoration of a coffee cup. I wonder how to explain why hot dogs and hot dog buns aren’t sold in equal amounts. These things confound me. But the bad days…they are so much more than I could ever imagine. I know I will probably spout off about walking to school uphill both ways through the snow with no shoes. It’s the parenting right of passage. But I don’t really believe that I had it tougher anymore. I’m 35 years old, and thought of terrorism only in the abstract until 9/11 (I was 21.). There were people who wanted to see Westerners dead before then, but the danger remained far away and illusive. I felt reassurance as a child that no war has been fought on U.S. soil since the Civil War. While that still remains the case, it’s apparent we are no longer immune to the world’s threats. I don’t know how to explain the thousands of senseless deaths in the historical event that defines the world for my generation, and I definitely don’t know how to explain the needless violence in Paris yesterday. I don’t know how to explain that more people have died for religion throughout the course of history than any other cause, and yet Jesus taught us to love. How do you explain what doesn’t make sense? And that walk to school…How do I explain there is evil out there bent on taking the most innocent of lives? This too is a concept I have only had to think about in the...