The most used appliance in our house is my 10-year-old son Leon's Xbox.

Upstate New York in the middle of October. You can't get more beautiful than that.

I've come to realize that making it your life's work to be different than your parents is not only hard to do, it's a dumb idea. Not everything we found fault with was necessarily wrong; we were right, for example, to resent, as kids, being told when to go to bed. We'd be equally wrong, as parents, to let our kids stay up all night. To throw out all the tools of parenting just because our parents used them would be like making yourself speak English without using ten letters of the alphabet; it's hard to do.

A new child in the house is a huge tourist attraction. It's like Disneyland, except there the lines are longer and no one brings casseroles.

But at the same time that the experience is pulling you apart, it's also bonding you. You have this joint venture! You both made this baby. And that's the thing I still can't get over

We had the boy's name picked out, but we didn't have a girl's. When he turned out to be a boy, we were so relieved. Literally, in the middle of contracting and pushing, and with my wife being drugged - out and half - lucid, we were still coming up with names.

They don't see that whole pattern. Worm/death. Worm/death. I would catch on.