How I’m Navigating Quarantine

How I’m Navigating Quarantine

We’ve been muddling through distance learning with a second grader and kindergartner, letting the kids watch tons of YouTube and play tons of Minecraft, and when my daughter runs into the table, taking her to my wife’s hospital so my wife can come out to the parking lot and repair her face with surgical tape instead of risking a visit to urgent care to get stitches.

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Mourning the Little Things on My Son’s Sixth Birthday

Mourning the Little Things on My Son’s Sixth Birthday

Our house should be overflowing with activity and noise and celebration today. It’s my middle child’s sixth birthday and, although we aren’t the most social animals, we do throw big birthday parties for our kids at our house every year. It’s one of our main traditions.

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Parenting and Reading in the Time of Coronavirus

Parenting and Reading in the Time of Coronavirus

My two sons and I sit on the black rocking recliner in our living room. The chair is worn, cracked, and on the verge of spilling pieces of foam, but it’s still plenty strong enough to hold three bodies. An 8-year-old on one arm, a 5-year-old on the other, and a 38-year-old in the middle, reading very animatedly from a book called The Black Cauldron — the second book in the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander.

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