Despite all the parent-teen “discussions” lately about homework, getting ready for school dances and perhaps yelling about misplaced folders, I am feeling a bit emotional...about the marbles. I am losing marbles by the week and somehow I can’t get them back. Let me explain. Our (Mike’s and my) mutual friend shared these three jars with us and told us a story. In the picture, the most full jar includes 936 marbles, one for every week in the life of a child from birth to 18. As

It had been years since attending the annual Stay-at-Home Dad Convention, now called HomeDadCon (but I can honestly say it didn’t take me long last weekend at the 22nd annual convention to feel right at home with all the guys that have chosen to do what I have being doing as my primary career for over 20 years – function as the primary caregiver and family manager. I remember walking into my first At-Home Dad convention, the fifth annual one in Chicago. I felt trepidation, w

Today we are ZagZigging at the 22nd annual Stay-At-Home Dan Convention, a.k.a. HomeDadCon17 – a first for me and a not-so-first for Mike, who attended the 5th conference when it was in Chicago, and a number of subsequent conferences MIKE: Consistent with our theme of “paying it forward,” ZagZig Parenting is a proud sponsor of the Trailblazer Panel at the conference that helped give me confidence when I was in the throws of being an at-home dad to three kids under the age of

Coming this Sunday, Sept. 10, alongside Grandparent’s Day is Swap Ideas Day. According to Days of the Year calendar, Swap Ideas Day encourages us to share and trade ideas and concepts. That is a perfect day for ZagZig Parents, who are consciously incompetent -- in other words, we know what we don’t know and we are willing to ask others for support. ZagZig Parents also know that the key to build a supportive parenting network is to swap ideas that work, and even those that don

In a couple of weeks I will attend the stay-at-home dad convention in Portland – HomeDadCon 2017! This is not the first convention that I have attended, and in fact I think this will be my 5th. (As I age my working memory recall isn’t as fast, so I will go with 5.) When I became an at-home dad two decades ago, we did not have these hip phases like DadCon, and dads today continue to amaze me with their models of active engagement, advocacy and support. When our kids were all