Family Life

I went out tonight with Joel and Micah on the bike. A while ago I borrowed a trailer from my friend Rob, so now I can take all three kids when I go riding. One goes on the child carrier on the back of the bike and the other two get towed behind in the [...]

This afternoon we went to the local Swiss National Day celebrations. We go every year, eating lunch on the grass in the shade of a tree, balancing paper plates on our knees, striving to keep offspring (three now!) from wandering off into the crowd. There’s a stage and rows of chairs set up in a [...]

This afternoon I took Joel with me on an errand, just the two of us. On the way back he asked, with a mischievous grin, if he could sit in Daniel’s seat. Sure. Why not? So with much conspiratorial laughter I buckled Joel into Daniel’s car seat, wondering what his comments would be about the [...]

The boys have a fixed bedtime ritual, and part of it involves turning off the light. Such a simple step, so intrinsic to going to bed, and yet so fraught with conflict and formal negotiation. On the surface, the agreed-upon procedure is that the boys take turns: tonight Daniel turns off the light, tomorrow night [...]

I took the boys to the Auto Show today. I went with Daniel last year and he really enjoyed it. He’d been looking forward to it again this year. I wasn’t sure whether to take Joel. Daniel had been talking about it for weeks, but Joel hadn’t even asked if he would or could go. [...]