My daughter got incredibly ill on Monday evening. She was completely lethargic and was losing liquid as fast as we could give it to her. We were considering taking her to the emergency room. Tuesday morning, she’s completely fine. She spends the entire day jumping on Dad’s lap and singing songs and jumping on Dad’s

Whenever there’s a challenge going on in my life, I find it much harder to write. I find my thoughts drifting away from the words and onto other things. For me, the best solution is to simply spend some time reflecting on that challenge. I put aside feeble attempts to work and focus on that

Sarah and I take turns handling the bedtime routine of our three children. One of us will make sure the kids get their teeth brushed and take their vitamins, read them their bedtime stories, sing songs for them, then hang out near their bedroom to handle the inevitable post-bedtime requests. The other parent essentially has

One of the most enjoyable parts of parenting a toddler is watching words and then eventually phrases and sentences start to emerge out of a verbal muck of sounds and noises. One day, your toddler is making nonsense sounds. The next, it seems that they’re making coherent words, and then pretty quickly after that, the

I love the feel of a simple haircut. I love the sensation of the hair leaving my head. I love running my fingers through my newly-shortened hair. I love the sense of wind blowing through the shortened hair, causing a sensation on my scalp that I haven’t felt in a while. It’s really the simple

I woke up this morning to the first snow of the year. Thankfully, it’s going to melt away in the next few hours so I don’t have to pull out the snowblower, but I did get to have some fun teaching my one year old how to throw a snowball at his four year old

This week, Sarah and I are going to our first parent-teacher conference, obviously regarding our oldest child. He brought home his first report card, which showed pretty solid progress in almost every area. He has a few little things to work on, but it mostly seems good. I’ve got a pretty good sense as to

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a half-hour long power nap in the middle of the day. It’s exactly as it sounds: I’m trying to sleep for a very short period during an energy lull in my day. What I’ve found is that some days it works like a charm and I’m ready to just tackle

This past week, I spent several hours putting together a detailed plan for some interesting things for The Simple Dollar through the end of 2012. Instead of focusing strictly on the writing (as I often spend my time doing), I stepped back and tried to look at the bigger picture. What do I have already

Drinking a glass of cold water when you’re thirsty. Tossing a Frisbee back and forth with your children. Holding your wife’s hand while you’re both enjoying watching a movie. Getting into bed after a long day. Many of the best pleasures in life are very simple ones. My Kid Flooded Our Home. What’s the Worst

As I write this, I’m in a quiet room with all the lights off. I’ve been rocking my youngest child for more than an hour to get him to take a much-needed nap. He’s had an intestinal bug for the last three days and hasn’t slept comfortably during any of it. The room is so

How do I select the links that I use in the weekly roundup? Each day, I visit quite a few personal finance blogs and blogs on related topics such as personal growth. If I see an article I like, I add it to my “roundup” folder. When I assemble a roundup article (usually on Monday

During the summer, Sarah and I tend to stay up until 11 or so, then sleep in until 7:30 or 8 AM (usually when the children wake us up). During the rest of the year, most of the family has to get up early for school or work, requiring alarms at 6:15 AM (or so).

In everyone’s life, friendships blossom and then other friendships fade into the background. You move. Your interests change. Your time availability changes. Things change. I have a lot of old friends in my life that I miss seeing regularly, but I find that when I do see them, we’ve both changed enough that whatever it

Over the past week, I’ve had the worst case of insomnia I’ve had since my college years. I simply cannot get to sleep before one or two in the morning, and during the last few hours of being awake, I’m basically useless. I can’t write anything coherent and if I read, I barely remember what

One very interesting part of living in Iowa (a facet that I imagine is really only shared with residents of New Hampshire) is the huge amount of political gamesmanship that goes on in this state for the six months or so before a presidential caucus. Because Iowa is the first state in the nation to

Rather than spending the day at daycare or at preschool until his mother picked him up after school, our son now comes home on the school bus. For a good hour, the only two people in our home are me and him. We have a snack together. We talk about our respective days for a

My oldest child starts kindergarten tomorrow. Our next child starts formal preschool tomorrow, too. They were babies just a short time ago, but they’re now progressing into the world, moving into their own independence. Frankly, it’s awesome. How We Didn’t Save Money with Our Babies The real story is that breastfeeding doesn’t work for everyone,

I spent several hours yesterday just catching up on some of my favorite personal finance and personal growth blogs, bookmarking interesting posts and the like. These are (some) of my favorite articles that I found along the way. Athletes Are Not Overpaid, Stop Whining About It I completely agree with this. Athletes are paid what