Category: Single Parenting
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“Looking Back at Divorce‑Day: The Day Everything Ended and Started Again”
This week was the big D‑Day — the day the divorce became official. For anyone who’s been through it, you know what I mean: separation and divorce finalized on the same day. No buffer. No limbo. No going back. All these years later, it’s strange to look back on a day that ended one version…
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On Full Moons, Teddy Bears, and Growing Up
Last night was a full moon here. A full moon on a clear, cold spring night. When I was a little boy, I used to sit at my window and stare at the moon for what felt like hours. Even now, whenever I hear the old Sesame Street song “If I Could Live on the…
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The Trip to San Diego: Our First Adventure After Divorce
If you’re a dad with a young daughter, you probably haven’t thought through every detail of what happens when you go hiking — especially the bathroom logistics. I learned this the hard way. We were halfway through a beautiful hike in Anza‑Borrego Desert State Park, heading back from a small oasis tucked into the desert,…
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The “I Don’t Remember” Game: What My Kids Taught Me About Two-Home Childhoods
Every two days I play the “I don’t remember” game with my kids. I pick them up from school, ask how their day or weekend was, and the answer is almost always the same: “I don’t remember.” I try not to push. I know divorce is a huge shift for young kids, and part of…
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Reflecting on the Year That Was 2025
It’s easy to forget that the world works differently for the creatures. Everything—from how they see adults to how time flows—feels fundamentally different from what their middle‑aged father experiences. Looking back on 2025, that’s the thing that stands out the most. But as I reflect on the year, here are the moments that stayed with…
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Navigating the Christmas Blues as a Single Parent
Christmas isn’t an easy time of year. There’s no way around it. The creatures have fun—they essentially get two Christmases—but I’m sure being pulled between two houses isn’t easy. And as a parent, it means I miss half their Christmas mornings, which is a big thing for me. As part of our parenting plan, we…
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Single Dad Life: Guilt, Overscheduling, and Overcompensating
The first time I heard about overcompensating, it was a story about someone else. A friend of a friend—a single, divorced mother—had bought her daughter an elaborate makeup set. It was a big purchase (I don’t know much about hair, so you can imagine I know even less about makeup sets), and my friend described…
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The tangled hair era: A Dad’s journey in hair management.
When I first started my single parenting journey, people—particularly older women—used to marvel at my ability to tie a ponytail. My daughter, around age four, had long hair that constantly unraveled. And being the diligent-ish parent I am, I would swoop in with a hairband and tie a “messy” ponytail. All it took was one…
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Carlisle Classic Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (or Raisin, if You Dare)
Years ago, when I bought my first house, I found an old cookbook tucked in a kitchen drawer. It was a photocopied collection of recipes from a local church group, and it quickly became the backbone of my cooking education. Flash forward a few years, and one of the first recipes I ever tried from…
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Burning the banana bread and building a family kitchen
The first time I tried to make banana bread, it was a spectacular success—depending on how you define success. At the time, I was single and had decided I didn’t want to be one of those guys living off frozen dinners for the rest of his life. It didn’t seem that hard in retrospect: grab…