Grasshopper New Media Presents...

My middle child is my most challenging child. It is the way Dash was born. His personality seemed to be embedded, long before he arrived, two weeks earlier than scheduled. He was the loudest baby in the hospital. When the nurses took him to bathe him we […]

We just got back from a trip for Spring Break with our 13 and 9 year old sons. It was a really great vacation, full of fun and togetherness, and a minimum of conflict, despite being in close quarters for almost ten days straight. This made me think about how trips with kids […]

I know all the numbers about how many careers people will have by the time the retire. The number is growing, so it is an almost pointless factoid to learn. And when it comes to knowing what your own, personal, responsibility-demanding child will do with her/his life, there is incredible pressure and frustration.
Besides, who can […]

My little girl, all of 12 years old, is planning her future. Now, I don’t mean this in the cute way, like you do when your toddler develops a fondness for the family calculator and you comment, “Oh, there she is, our little CPA.” I mean, my daughter is 12 and she’s actually looking at […]

Thanks to everyone for your patience. We are resuming our regularly scheduled program (see our freshest content below) while we continue to work behind the scenes to restore all of the delicious content that’s been eaten.
Thanks for sticking with us and for all of your well wishes. We will be back to […]

My time as a homeschooling mother of one is coming to an abrupt halt. Cindy-Lu, age 3, will begin pre-school (for real this time) at home with me. I sent her to a “real” pre-school for a couple of months, but it wasn’t working out schedule wise, so I pulled her out and decided we […]

I’m going to be honest, my relationship with the older boys has not always been easy. There are certain aspects of their collective personality that either clash with mine or at the very least are completely incomprehensible to me. Is this their fault? Nope. Mine? No, I don’t think that […]

For the folks who are playing the game at home, we now have the ugly error message cleaned up all nice and tidy. Now comes the task of rebuilding the site. In the meantime, we’ll do our best to get new posts published. Thanks for hanging in there with us, we surely appreciate it.

As you may have noticed, we’re having a little bit of a problem. We’re working on it, so please keep checking back. You, our readers, are the absolute reason that we do this. We love you and we would really miss you if you went away! So hang in there, we’ll get this fixed just […]

My wife, our toddler, and I went to a friend’s second birthday party this weekend. Our daughter Boo was the oldest there by a bare two months, but she’s riding high on the growth charts; I think she outweighed even some of the adults, and it’s all muscle. Even more telling, her usual playmates are […]