Content about We've Got a Lot of Kids

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February 15, 2012

But Tuesday’s just as bad. The only thing I’ve ever had against Sunday is that it’s followed by Monday, and nothing good has ever happened on Monday, throughout recorded history. I’ve confirmed this through personal research, decades of devout drinking. But eventually the research went into the ditch, like it often does; I was compelled to abandon it entirely.

February 13, 2012

They Call it Stormy Monday *

But Tuesday’s just as bad. The only thing I’ve ever had against Sunday is that it’s followed by Monday, and nothing good has ever happened on Monday, throughout recorded history. I’ve confirmed this through personal research, decades of devout drinking. But eventually the research went into the ditch, like it often does; I was compelled to abandon it entirely.

January 3, 2012

All the Blue Legos

Our family is like a full-sized symphony orchestra, made of only trumpets.

Around the supper table our four kids compete with one another for air space, attention and the seats closest to Mom. While they joust in the same spectrum

Our family is like a full-sized symphony orchestra, made of only trumpets.

Around the supper table our four kids compete with one another for air space, attention and the seats closest to Mom. While they joust in the same spectrum, each kid has their own strategies, verbal and physical weapons, defenses, charisma values.

December 5, 2011

What Do You Do With My Teeth?

Let me explain: I’ve been busy, work; my wife and our four kids: busy too. My people call their people; we do lunch. So we’ve all been quite busy; I love writing my columns, I love my wife and kids and I love my readers. You’re all fine, I swear.

Our youngest daughter Gracie, seven, has recently lost almost all of her front teeth, sometimes two at a time, so there’s been plenty of visits from the Tooth Fairy lately.

Let me explain: I’ve been busy, work; my wife and our four kids: busy too. My people call their people; we do lunch. So we’ve all been quite busy; I love writing my columns, I love my wife and kids and I love my readers. You’re all fine, I swear.

Our youngest daughter Gracie, seven, has recently lost almost all of her front teeth, sometimes two at a time, so there’s been plenty of visits from the Tooth Fairy lately.

October 9, 2011

Slug-bug Daddy

Our kids have been playing Slug-bug for several months. On a particularly long, dull, sodden and bickering car-ride back from some interminable shopping trip, my lovely wife Maria taught them to scan the freeway for Volkswagen Beetles to pass the time and keep them from picking on each other for sport.

August 30, 2011

How We Spent Our Summer Vacation

Our family recently took a camping trip for our summer vacation. Circumstances make camping an attractive option for us, as it is for many families: low cost, low hygiene requirements, and all outdoors, those fields of the Lord, in which to play.

My wife Maria had actually never been camping before, which left no one else in our family to be a know-it-all about camping except me.

Our family recently took a camping trip for our summer vacation. Circumstances make camping an attractive option for us, as it is for many families: low cost, low hygiene requirements, and all outdoors, those fields of the Lord, in which to play.

My wife Maria had actually never been camping before, which left no one else in our family to be a know-it-all about camping except me.

July 31, 2011

The Complaint Department

It’s an anniversary: I’ve been writing We’ve Got a Lot of Kids for six years, and we still have a lot of kids, and I’m still writing columns about them.

Over the last year our kids have grown a little taller, a little smarter, more graceful; they’ve shed baby fat and grown into semi-sophisticated grade-schoolers with quickly formed, quickly changed and vehemently held opinions.

It’s an anniversary: I’ve been writing We’ve Got a Lot of Kids for six years, and we still have a lot of kids, and I’m still writing columns about them.

June 6, 2011

Tip Your Children’s Teachers

Our kids all attend Vashon schools, Chautauqua Elementary. Two are going into first grade next year. Our older two will be in third and fifth grades.

Like many families, we live on Vashon in part because of the schools. The Vashon Island School District provides a great education to children of any family that wants it, plus it’s a nice-sized school system with a well-mannered school board, mostly free of creationist agendas or embezzlement scandals.

March 31, 2011

Pluperfect Possessive-Obsessive

I’m in our library, working on an earlier version of this column, when the fragile calm is shattered like a brick tossed through a window. Our oldest son Colin, ten, and oldest daughter, Meredith, eight, have discovered that they disagree.

“Hey-uhhh!”
“It’s mine-uhhh! Give it!”
“Mom!“
“Give. It. Back!“
“It’s mine-uhhh. I had it first. She took it from me!”
“Mom, he took it and won’t give it back! Hey-uhhh!”