Can I call time out on the serious for a moment and discuss how strange, how surprising, how hilarious it can be to talk with a two-and-three-quarters-year-old? Sometimes conversation with Larkin has this Abbott-and-Costello, "Who's on first?" quality. Other times it's way more Dada...as in the surreal, Tristan Tzara kind of Dada.

Usually she isn't trying to be funny. It's just the language machine, cranking into high gear in a child her age, producing backfires and wheeling around in wild circles. Does a toddler use language — or vice versa? Molly and I laugh ourselves silly.

Like at her dead-on mimicking of us. Finding my clothes draped on the purple chaise lounge she likes playing on, she scolds, "Dada, take this stuff away, and please don't leave your things on my couch!"

Sometimes a hilarious line comes from nowhere. "I smell skunk!" she will say, wrinkling her nose furiously. Or she'll prance into the living room, where Molly and I sit reading,… Read More

This summer, a great job offer fell into my lap. Just like that: a gilded box, dropping from the heavens and landing right smack in front of me.

Turns out the box had been sent by someone I knew from — of all places — the playground. A fellow father I'd met on three successive Sunday mornings last spring, each of us with toddler in one hand and New York Times in the other. The kids played, the dads talked. We… Read More

First things first — the EPT was negative. So for now anyway, we're still one and done.

Next, thanks to everyone who posted or emailed to offer encouragement (and to suggest that Molly fire her OBGYN!). Your words were funny, wise, and provocative. One old friend sent this advice:

Rand, Larkin's childhood is going to be completely different from yours. Embrace that. Don't try to duplicate your own experience. The life you two have chosen is not one of a doctor and… Read More

The other day Molly was visiting her mother and mentioned she had some news. "You're pregnant!" her mom burst out. It wasn't anything like that, but that's how people think. Have one child, soon you'll have another.

In fact, Molly and I have been talking about whether we in any conceivable way might want to, you know, conceive again. These discussions began haphazardly. Molly was tired of taking the pill. What did I think about getting a vasectomy? she inquired.… Read More

OK, I admit it, Molly and I are bookaholics. What can you expect? We were both English majors in college, both English teachers later on (she still is one), and I'm a writer to boot. And now here's Larkin, toddler bibliophile. From the start she was entranced — a two-month-old whose wailing magically ceased whenever she stared up at the bookshelf in the TV room. Two-plus years later, we've read her how many books? Well, at least ten a day,… Read More

The end of summer drew near, and it was time for a tiny little girl to put away her tiny little girl things. The bright blue day came for Larkin — after much fear and trembling — to say goodbye to Binky.

We all had been preparing for a long time. It began a year ago with a cute book called Binky, in which a diaper-wearing infant looks everywhere for his lost pacifier, finally finding it "in my crib, just… Read More