I'm positively swooning over how awesome my daughter is. Both of my kids, obviously, but this week the spotlight is on Dangerg!rl, 4 year-old birthday girl extraordinaire. For her birthday this year, she asked for a purple skateboard and also for a purple salon chair so she could style her
… Read full post »

 

 

"You either have one very lucky little daughter, or one very lucky gay partner."

– Cashier lady at SuperTarget, as I was checking out with a cart full of pink and magenta party plates and plastic silverware, a pink tablecloth, pink balloons, the purple doll's salon chair… Read full post »

 

The occasion of Esquire Magazine's 75th anniversary is reason enough in itself to go pick up a copy. Among its many treasures is "The Future of Words," a brief essay by Dave Eggers, who Esquire is rightly calling one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st Century/… Read full post »

 

 

Today I volunteered as a parent chaperone for a school field trip to Denver's Washington Park Botanic Gardens with my son's Kindergarten/First Grade class. More about that in the next post, but for the moment here's a charming snippet of dialogue that makes for a nice sequel to… Read full post »

 

 

This doesn't have anything to do with the rest of what this blog has been about, so I'll keep it brief:

The Washington Post is reporting that David Foster Wallace hanged himself on Friday.

My best friends and I discovered DFW when we were in college, just… Read full post »

 

 

Coincidence? My daughter's favorite character from The Incredibles is the mom, Elastigirl. My son is loving both of the Fantastic 4 movies, and although he loves all 4 equally, and also the Silver Surfer, he says he's partial to Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic or – as… Read full post »

 

Interesting development over here at Action Academy: We might have to revise our vegetarian menu. My daughter Dangerg!rl, aka Independivore, came home from Pre-K last week declaring herself a meat-eater.

This is potentially a family crisis: I've been a vegetarian/pescetarian for 15… Read full post »

 

 

Action Academy field trip, long overdue: Although we've now been living in Colorado for one year after a very urban existence in Washington, DC, we haven't had nearly as many outdoor adventures here as I'd intended. Thankfully my eco-warrior environmental-crusading friends &ndas… Read full post »

 

What better way to introduce the kids to the idea of real-life superheroes than some serious Olympic exposure? I remember the Olympics being a big deal in my family when I was growing up, and I'm trying to replicate the experience here at Action Academy.

My… Read full post »