Today Chloe turns 11. Now, both her and Julianna have had to celebrate their birthdays during the Great Quarantine of 2020. I find myself feeling a bit conflicted about how to handle the emotional ups and downs both girls have felt about their birthdays happening during this time. For Julianna’s birthday, we asked a bunch
Category: Matt
The Matriarch
Well… My grandmother died today. She was just about to turn 95 years old. This is a weird one. My grandmother, Rhoda Brand, had been battling dementia. It is difficult to know exactly when it really took hold but I’d say it has been roughly 8 to 10 years where I can remember being able
Quaranteeny Bit Crazy
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Today I dyed part of Chloe’s hair blue. Here’s proof: In the “Book of Parenting” that lists all of the things that you will likely do at some point or another during your time as a parent, this was unlisted. It was the first time I took on
Et Cetera
Today, Julianna turns 12. Every year, since she was 3, I’ve been publishing a post on this day. You can read them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. These birthday posts have gotten harder and harder to write each year. I generally start thinking about them a few days in advance
Zen and the Art of Childhood Maintenance
Tonight, Julianna and I had a “date night.” My wife had arranged plans for her and Chloe to go hang out with one of Chloe’s friends and her mother so Julianna and I had our own thing. She picked the restaurant (which happened to be my favorite local Italian place) and off we went. We
Honoring Eddie
The following is a bit heavy handed, more than a bit dramatic, and a little bit of a departure (hopefully temporarily) from my typical blog posts. I wanted to make sure I could spread this around to as wide an audience as possible. I appreciate your attention. As they say, “desperate times…” On May 7th,
Counting to 10
Today Chloe turns 10. I know what you’re thinking: Another exciting look into the future! I thought about doing that for Chloe like I did for Julianna but Chloe deserves her own thing, not some derivative nonsense. And so I’ve been thinking back to all that’s happened since her last birthday; all the moments of
11.
Today Julianna turned 11. This year’s birthday post might have ended up looking like this: This year, we talked to Julianna about sex. The end. That would have been a big enough event to cover the whole year. I then thought about what I did last year. Last year, I did a very clever “flashback”
The Talk
Disclaimer: This post might be considered by some to be “explicit” based on the subject matter, my apparent lack of understanding of it, or your potential belief that I should or shouldn’t have been part of the conversation. You can agree or disagree with our approach. This is just me describing our experience discussing an
Sw*ar W!rds
The girls love music, and learned some time ago that song lyrics were available in apps like Apple Music. Fun right? Now, we can listen to whatever songs we want AND sing along. Just take a moment and remember when you would sing along like this: It’s gonna take a lot to get my Waze