As you get older you realize your parents don't look so dumb - and that you're not as smart as you thought you were.

People come up to us and ask how we knew so much about their own family... I'm talking about people from faraway places, too. I get people from Turkey and Chile coming up to me and saying I wrote about their family.

He was born early. But he was born within a safe range of premature.

My wife and I never agree on the dishtowels. It's a matter of terms. She asks me not to put the dishtowel in the sink. So I drape it over the sink, but not in the sink. If that's our biggest problem, I think we're in good shape.

There was a period where our child's birth was getting really close, and we still had nothing. We were dangerously close to calling him Untitled Baby Project.

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.

I used to walk into a party and scan the room for attractive women. Now I look for women to hold my baby so I can eat potato salad sitting down.