There’s nothing quite like the ringing sense of disorientation and excitement experienced the first time you’re boarding a flight with your own child in tow and you hear the ‘Now boarding families with small children announcement’ and realize that this entitlement now applies to you. Yesterday, we returned home from our third transatlantic trip in [...]

Two recent sightings from opposite poles of Berlin’s cultural zeitgeist: 1. Not-So-Little Cleveland Indian Last week, I was biking home from a basketball game in early evening and ran into this, looming over Alexanderplatz: What? Aha, it turns out that this is art— an installation by French media artist Cyprien Gaillard, exploring the legacy and [...]

[Note: this post was originally written for another Mission-oriented blog, hence the direct references to San Francisco audience] Raising a child is a breeze in Berlin thanks to the wide availability of kid-friendly beer gardens. (Note: a ‘child’ is a small human who has not yet achieved adult stature— I was a little unclear on [...]

My son is now a shade over two years old and continues to call me Hi, There! As far as he’s concerned, this is my only name, that’s his story, and he’s sticking to it. Even if we painstakingly recite ‘Mama… Papa… ‘ with pointing, he’ll happily repeat back, ‘Mama… Hi, There!’ Now that he’s [...]

As a parent, I feel it’s very important that my child understand and appreciate fully man’s dominion over the animal kingdom. So, over the weekend, I built this educational three-dimensional installation to help explain the concept to him: Here’s how it works: 1. Wild animals– represented here as polar bear, elephant, and giraffe– are part [...]

My wife handed me three CDs from her teenage collection last night and asked, “Which one of these do you want our son to listen to in the car?” (She’s going nuts listening to the same album of kiddie songs over and over again, thus wants to introduce some variety). The options: A. The Who’s [...]

Nice World Cup final. My only regret is that when Iniesta scored and the Spanish team began celebrating, the producers didn’t cut to a split-screen view of Paul the Octopus being deliriously mobbed by other octopii in recognition of his prefect record of prognostication. (Above: artist’s conception of what this might have looked like, using [...]

Mine punched me in the face the other day and started crying because he hurt his little fist. I’m pretty sure that has something to do with it.

This past week, our kid has gotten full-blown sick for the first time in his young life– throwing up, feverish, the whole nine yards. This has introduced us to a routine that is familiar to a great many people but thankfully new to us, the Sleepless Night With Sick Baby. Much like getting married, taking [...]

Felix turned six months old on Friday. As it fell on a Friday, I allowed the family a rare dress-down casual day and we celebrated with some local hemp microbrews in the conference room. As I’ve written about many times before, I strongly believe in raising a family according to the same principles that you [...]