Lala recently picked up a Mega Bloks castle at a yard sale and lugged it home for the kids to play with. Inside a box the size of a convection oven, a plastic sword and shield rested atop a pile of oversized bricks. London was immediately drawn to the inherent...

London’s friend was over the house the other day, and like every other time Calvin’s visited, he feels the need to build things. “Come on, Londy,” he’ll say in a pretend adult’s voice, stretching the bass tones of his unbroken vocal cords. Then he’ll throw...

For many years, my students’ favorite movie was The Usual Suspects. The film stars Kevin Spacey as a criminal with Phil Collins’ hair piece who spins one helluva yarn while being questioned by a slick Chazz Palminteri. Spacey uses physical details from the...

At the end of each summer, my father leaves febrile Florida to visit the multifaceted marketplace of Santa Fe. While he’s here, he acts like a crazy culture addict, catching the 6 a.m. shuttle to Indian Market in the morning, power walking through the Folk Art Museum...

London was on the threshold of a most glorious day by any young boy’s standards, or so we thought. Our afternoon plan was to attend a travelling carnival in the Villa Linda Mall parking lot and then scoot over to Toys R Us to buy London his first bicycle. His older...

Sometimes I think my son London was serially robbed in a past life. Unlike his sister Poppy who, at age four, would have given away half her possessions to her worst enemy, London guards all his gear like Montgomery Burns on his deathbed. If I ask London if he wants...

When I got the call at work that my son, London, had sprained his ankle jumping off a couch, I thought I knew what to expect: 24 hours of ice, elevation, a week of wrapping his junior joint in an ace bandage. Maybe a few days of Motrin. Some extra kind words coupled...

“Dad, I had a bad dream,” Poppy said, waking me in the middle of the night. I sat up and started our familiar dialogue around these fairly frequent disturbances. “What was it about?” I fumbled for my glasses and stuck my hand into a glass of...

On our way back from spring break vacation in Florida, we had a layover in Kansas City. Tired from having spent a day of frenzied fun at Disney World and a sleepless night stacked up in beds and couches at my brother Eddie’s house in Orlando, we chose to have...

Last Saturday morning, I was awakened by a cocktail weenie-sized finger pressing deeply into my eyeball. “Dad, wake up,” my son London said, one hand placed on the hip of his T-rex pajamas. “Can’t I sleep?” “No way.” He pressed his...