release

Nate loves music. Everything from Christmas carols to heavy metal gets him dancing, with head bobbing and arms waving. And when he loves a song and the song ends, claps his hands and shouts, “Yay!”
This morning at mass, the last notes of the first hymn had just finished echoing through the church when [...]

Pool warrior

Originally uploaded by Mike’s Flickr Account.

“Today is a good day to sunscreen my scalp.”

I have a metal comb. It’s the single material possession I inherited from my grandfather, Alex. His name I carry as my middle name, and have bestowed to my first son.
Grandpa Alex was a barber. He had a barber shop in his house in a small town in Ohio, and that metal [...]

We’re in New York, visiting Dineen’s parents for Christmas. Her father has just finished making us breakfast, her mother is at work, and Dineen is upstairs taking a shower. Alex is playing with a Fisher-Price bus, running over plastic pedestrians at criminally negligent speeds.
Nate, as he has done many times, grabbed my hand [...]

First we hit some clubs down in Ybor City, finally ending up in a champagne-soaked, half-naked orgy of New Year festivities where we caroused until the sun came up.
Wait, that’s not what happened.
For reasons that will be obvious to even the most casual readers of this site, we all celebrated the arrival of the New [...]

We are proud to announce the birth of Nathaniel Dennis Wasylik, born at 8:17 pm on Wednesday, December 28.
He arrived with emphasis, weighing in at 9 pounds, 7 ounces, and measuring 22 inches in length.
Mother and son are happy, healthy, and looking forward to coming home in a couple of days. Nate is also [...]

Dineen has been having contractions this morning so it looks like we’ll be headed to the hospital.
Other updates will be at the Kid’s Corner blog.

The waiting is the hardest part…
When one becomes pregnant, there are two questions that typically need answers. That is, assuming one already knows who the father of one’s baby is. The two questions are:

Are we really pregnant?
When is the baby due?

The first question is the easiest. In my case, the answer is a [...]

Dineen’s just about ready to pop, except that she’s not really ready to pop yet.

Dineen wants everyone to take a guess!
With Alex, we had people guess when he might arrive and what his name might be at the showers and at our big bar-b-cue. Since we aren’t having any pre-baby parties or showers this time around, I thought it would still be fun to have people guess when Thumper [...]

So let’s say I drive up to a McDonald’s drive-through window with my son. The boy, who is two and a half, typically ges the kid’s meal. Being two and a half, he pretty much eats anything in nugget form, and disdains foods not available as nuggets (unless they serve as a vehicle [...]

My son not only likes to watch football; my son not only knows how to do the Seminole chop; he also knows to do it on the band’s cue. His mommy is so proud.