There are few things I loathe more during the holidays than hustling about, rushing from one family scene to another, inhaling an endless stream of lunches and dinners while tacitly acknowledging my loved ones as I excuse myself and race on to the next culinary pit stop. Though my folks divorced when...

It's that time of the year. Not the decking of halls and spiking egg nog and turkey hangover time, though that certainly is upon us. No, now is the time for that wonderful holiday tradition of bartering with Maddie's Mom for time with my daughter. It has become an annual rite of passage, one...

One of the more difficult aspects of parenting, I've found, is helping Maddie appreciate all her blessings. The girl wants for nothing. Every Christmas is a lottery jackpot; you'd think Santa tired as he reached her tree and decided to just leave the whole bag. Her Mom told me last year that...

As the father of a child who doesn't live with me, one of my favorite parts of the day is catching Maddie on the phone and talking about her day. It isn't always fun — sometimes she doesn't feel like chatting, and there are days when getting any information out of her is like pulling teeth...

It's an amazing time to be an American and the father of a young child. As a journalist, I have an insatiable appetite for information and spend copious amounts of time consuming it. What's worse, I'm a big time politics junkie. I can't begin to imagine how much time I devoted to the...

The day Maddie's Mom and I decided we just could not go any further, the day we amicably agreed — one of the few times that ever happened — it was in Maddie's and our best interest to separate, was the first day from which I was always going to lose. I would give nearly anything to have Maddie...

This post has been an extremely long time in coming. I’ve opined and gone on work-related tangents for the last couple of months and have completely lost sight of why I began writing here in the first place. Thus, I've included an excerpt from my original post as prelude to refresh the memory. For...

We've progressed in society; it's now perfectly acceptable that our children take a back seat to how we feel our personal desires and sense of self are being met. Perhaps I'm naive. I wasn't born with a silver spoon dangling from my lips, and I was never used by my folks as a living display...

Ever see something new for parents and think to yourself, "Why on earth wasn't that around when my kids were little?" The ABC Kids Expo showcased several hundred vendors selling just about everything you could imagine - and some things you shouldn't. I mean, I'm certain they're...

The ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas was a completely new thing for me. For one, I'd never been to Las Vegas. And while I've been to major conventions before, they were "guy" shows - guns and cars. The woman-to-man ratio was completely reversed from my previous convention experience (a fact...