Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. The Situation Room. The Fortress of Solitude. I was a high school teacher for 5 years and once dreamed of opening a real-life superhero academy some day to help shape talented and adventurous young people into the kinds of heroes we so desparately need. You know, "We are the leaders we've been waiting for" type-stuff. I was going to call it Action Academy, and we were going to travel the world learning, living, loving, leading.

Maybe I'll figure out how to pull that superhero school together someday and figure out how to save the world, but for the moment I'm working on an even more personal project: I'm raising two toddler superheroes of my own. Dangerg!rl is almost 4. Her brother Iron A!dan is 5.5 and starts kindergarten in about a week. Their many powers are only beginning to reveal themselves, and I'm making it my responsibility to give them guidance as they develop. I'm Daredev!l Dad, newly single, watching out for supervillains, trying to figure out how this all works.

Here's what Action Academy looks like in practice at the moment: We spend countless hours around here running, jumping, climbing, playing, training. We ride bikes, and trikes, and skateboards. We go nuts on the merry-go-round. We go swimming every chance we get. We sample the new ice cream flavors at Pajama Bakery Company regularly. We recently bought a tent, we're embracing new adventure possibilities around our new home in Denver, and we're going to get everybody snowboarding this season. We love "alone time" (even Superman had that Fortress of Solitude) and we have the Banecave – a secret superhero saferoom – hidden in our house. We read books, watch superhero cartoons, make up stories, draw comics of our own, and make up elaborate stories about our superhero adventures. I've literally given the "With great power comes great responsibility" speech, word for word, when at a loss for better words to sort out a supersibling conflict.

Daredev!l Dad's bespectacled alter-ego makes a living blogging about action sports and writing about adventure lifestyles. This, too, feels like an adventure worth blogging about. Welcome to Action Academy. I will try to tell some good superhero stories.

– Colin Bane