I adored Christmas as a kid, and not simply for the presents, which seemed both central and beside the point. The Gresko Family Christmas was as orchestrated, ornate, and long as a high mass. In early November the calendar came off the fridge, and my parents filled many of December's blank squares with sweet promises. Visit a farm to get the tree. Switch out the usual knickknacks for the holiday tchotchkes. Take in the season's splendid decorations, from a trip to Philadelphia department stores to drives around bedecked suburban neighborhoods. The specifics, right down to the roster of …

Kids are little mirrors, and not just because of their impeccable mimic abilities. Often, their relationship to the world – how they deal with new situations, make friends, and learn – presents a window onto ourselves. Though sometimes, with my son, it's a view I would prefer not to see. Back in college, I struggled with sleeping. I met most nights thrumming with energy, my mind boiling, replaying events from the day, anticipating the morrow to come, fretting about the direction of my life. The usual teenage, college-boy angst, turned to 11. Unless I drank myself into a stupor or unwound in a…

Toddlers don't handle family emergencies well. As we had reason to learn on the eve of Hurricane Irene, when, while many made tracks out of the city, my father-in-law came in to receive medical attention. Diabetes had weakened him, and the failings of age made it difficult for him to care for himself. My wife spent all of Friday night with him at the hospital, the beginning of several days of stressful preparations to find him help, during which family members came and went. Conversations carried the charge of urgency, and the heaviness of worry. Our toddler son, ever sensitive, attuned to it…

My hands bear numerous nicks and small cuts. Most don't bother me, but some, on the knuckles and cuticles, sting. On the meaty bit below my thumb, scabs form an oblong constellation from where my son bit through the skin. Several days old, it still aches when I touch it. The tot's temper has taken yet another turn. Oh, he still flails, kicks, and bangs his head against the ground—a perpetual lump, a stack of lumps, lump upon lump, rise from his forehead. Now he's added assaulting mom and dad to his list of tantrum terrors. Biting. Scratching. Hitting. Pinching. Kicking. Headbutting. He goes …

“Terrible isn't a strong enough adjective for two year-olds,” I told my mommy friend. We had run into one another on Vanderbilt Avenue, midway through a sweltering morning, our deceptively cute toddlers in tow. Neither of us were having a good day. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I love my child, but toddlers suck.” I caught the briefest of communications pass between our children. A tiny wink, the ocular equivalent of a hi-five, lips wrinkling to a near-smirk, a slight nod of the head – the message was clear. “Winning.” … A few weeks ago my son learned how to say “yes.” Up to this point, his …

These days, it's the Wild West on the hot macadam plains of Underhill Playground.  A backdrop to scenes of both great cooperation and cruelty, the playground presents a microcosm of humanity's social nature in all its extremes. There's The Builder at the foot of the sprinklers, pouring water from bucket to bucket in some private project. The Daredevil careens around the playset, intent on mastering its every challenge. The Social Director gives out roles -- "You push and I'll honk the horn." While The Observer takes it all in from the swings.  Ah, and here comes my son, tearing toward that …

Sometimes I feel like an imposter. I espouse all the right Brobo values – I'm liberal, green, socially responsible, a do-it-yourselfer. The kitchen is the heart of our house. I like BAM. I'm a fan of Tina Fey and Jon Stewart. I belong to the Park Slope Food Coop, where instead of additives our purchases come laden with adjectives like free-range, grass-fed, hormone-free, and locally-grown. But unlike my fellow Brooklyn bourgeoisies, some of my values, while heartfelt, stem from a proletariat frugality. Take my concern for the environment, for example. I love this planet as much as anyone. I …

“Even as a toddler my son was physical – we constantly worried he was going to hurt himself,” a woman once told me at a party. Her son had grown up to be athletic, a bit of a daredevil, into sports and roughhousing, something neither of his parents quite understood. When I asked why she thought this was, she shrugged. “It was just his personality from the start.” Countless parents have told me the same thing: the seeds of the adult's personality are present from birth. My mom, for example, loves to boast about how imaginative I was even as a baby, happy to sit and play with a sock or a pot …

A couple of weeks ago at the Underhill Playground, amid the three-wheeled plastic cars and other nearly played-to-death toys scattered about the rubberized safety surface, I saw a chicken. That's right – a clucking, strutting, pecking chicken. At first I thought it might be a mutant dog or rabbit on steroids, because it didn't resemble any farmyard fowl I had ever seen. With fluffy grey feathers and a bluish cast to its waddle, it looked like a bird crossed with an Ewok. The thing ambled around in the shade of a tree pit, contained by a rainbow colored fence about six inches high. A gaggle of…

I'm watching the tamarind monkeys at The Prospect Park Zoo with my toddler when two little girls run past us giggling. Ignoring my cries to stop, he tails them. After pausing to press their faces against the iguana's glass, the girls careen around a corner and disappear along with my son. I catch up to him in the baboon's amphitheater. The girls skip up and down the steps before continuing their whirlwind tour. As their squealing fades, I reprimand my son for running in the zoo and not coming when I called. “This isn't a place for running,” I tell him. He points in the girls direction, and …

Sometimes – alright, maybe often – I don't practice what I preach. Take some of my New Year's resolutions: get out of the house more, make time to relax and recharge, don't be so darn hard on myself. How am I doing? Fail, fail, and a colossal fail. Walking away from the domestic duties of being a stay-at-home dad is not as easy as it was back in the glory days of my son's infancy. Now the tot has a voice that sobs “dada, no bye-bye” in a tone calibrated to wrench at my heart, and he requires far more energy to look after. I feel guilty leaving my wife, exhausted at the end of a long workday, …

1. In between programs, PBS Kids airs public service announcements aimed at parents, but my son loves watching these commercials more than many of the cartoons. He enjoys seeing the little kids with their mommies and daddies. At times throughout the day he points at the television. "Babies," he says, his tone indicating his desire. The PSAs impart 60-second lessons such as dealing with your child's emotions and explaining infant development. The most affecting depicts children as video recorders, paying attention to their parents' every action and reaction, learning how to behave, communicate…

Losing control over my sleep has been one of the hardest parts of being a parent.   The fear that something -- a diaper mishap, a siren, a growing pain -- might transform my slumbering cherub into a wailing wreck looms over my every restful moment.  Fortunately, my wife and I lucked out. Our son has had a strong diurnal rhythm from the start -- even in the womb he rarely kicked past bedtime. Sure, we've had the occasional hiccup of a few sleepless nights. But a blend of letting him cry before swooping in to provide comfort always solved the problem before it got out of hand.  Until two months…

Five days a week, 4 o’clock finds my son waiting by the window for his mom. "Do you want to play?" I ask him. "Read a book? Have a snack? Go for a walk?" Every question prompts the same response, half-whispered with a seriousness born of concentration: “Mama.” When I leave him in his vigil by the window, he follows me around moaning for mama as if, like a cheddar bunny, I could produce her from the pantry. Sometimes I put on a song and dance routine – or the television – to distract him. But usually I just sit with him and repeat again and again, “She’s at work.” To which he echoes, “—ork," …

It had been a while since someone dissed me for being a full-time stay-at-home dad. The sling came from a newcomer to our weekly playgroup, a friend of a friend, a part-time stay-at-home dad and so I assumed, a comrade-in-arms. From the start, our parenting approaches didn’t mesh. Whereas I crouched at the kitchen play set with the tots, the interloper sat alone on the couch fiddling with his iPhone. He was obsessed with the thing, so much so that he snapped at his boy for interrupting his texting. When he finally unplugged long enough to make chit-chat, he asked how many days I mind my son…

Let me say this up front: I’m not the best parent in the world. This fact was paraded for all of Prospect Heights to see a couple of weeks ago. While walking down Underhill Avenue during one of this winter's many deep freezes, my toddler son began throwing a classic “get me out of this damn stroller and carry me home” fit, a meltdown that recalled Linda Blair’s performance in The Exorcist. It being both painfully cold and several long blocks to our brownstone, I decided not to free him till we arrived at our stoop. Determined to press the issue, my Houdini of a son managed to pop one of his …

I used to hate being out at a bar and looking up from my pint to find a cutie staring me down, eyes wide and glassy, face slicked with drool. An underage, diapered one I mean. “Isn’t any place safe from breeders?” I’d kvetch. Then I’d roll my eyes at the tot’s parents, annoyed at how they clung to their pre-spawn freedom, the footloose days they had traded in for naptimes and conventionality. On top of my personal prejudices, I didn’t think the noise – the music at many bars leaves me with temporary tinnitus – was good for developing eardrums. I mean, come on parents: Safety first. Of course…