For some unknown reason the six-year-old Zoologist and the four-year-old Ballerina have decided lately that the thing to do is to set booby traps in their room.

Today I write to about a Christmas miracle our family experienced last weekend. Now, let me be clear, it isn’t one of those Christmas miracles where someone was healed of a terminal illness. But, to the parents of small children visiting Santa without a meltdown is most definitely a miracle.

Parenting is a difficult, exhausting, and at times thankless job. For long stretches it can seem like my words and actions have no impact on my kids whatsoever.

Most nights I try to read with the six-year-old Zoologist and the four-year-old Ballerina before bedtime. Right now we are on book #5 in the Magic Treehouse Series, Night of the Ninjas.

We are sorry that we were not able to spend our usual time with you this morning, but as you know, the children you gave us had other plans.

I’ve debated about whether I should write this blog post for a couple of reasons. First, I highly suspect that those that don’t know me might read it and think I am an unhinged lunatic.

This past Saturday I decided to take our three eldest children to the bookstore. I’ve done this before and immediately regretted it, but it is typical for me to never learn my lesson the first time.

One thing that has become abundantly clear to me as we have raised our children is that our two-year-old Demolitions Expert is by no means a morning person.

Love Justin Time? Don't know anything about Justin Time? It doesn't matter follow along as my good friend, Dave Atkins, and I watch cartoons with our kids and comment on the process.

Today our dear Demolitions Expert turned two-years-old. This is a momentous occasion in a child’s life, particularly with our Demolitions Expert because we weren’t really sure that she would make it this far.

It is back to school time, and back to school time means our family needs shoes. I’m not sure how many pairs of shoes we have purchased in the last couple of weeks, but I’m pretty sure we just outfitted an entire baseball team.

One of the most common parts of parenting is wondering if your children are listening. This never changes. Never.

This week the Zoologist and the Ballerina are taking swimming lessons. Monday was the first lesson, and for some reason we decided that the whole family needed to go along for the experience.

Out of necessity yesterday was grocery shopping day. I suggested to my lovely wife that I take a couple of kids to the grocery store.

The past few days the Demolitions Expert has been battling a virus. Because this virus has brought with it days of high fevers the lovely Mrs. Sharp and I have been running the two-man weave to keep the one-month-old Jedi quarantined from his big sister.

I calmly asked the young Zoologist if he had been messing with the thermostat. I played it cool, like the good cop in every episode of Dragnet. He said that he had. I asked him why. He said, “Because I was cold, and I wanted it to get warmer.” Before reading him his rights I thought it wise to impart two pieces of advice to him. First, don’t ever touch the thermostat again. Second, you didn’t make it warmer, you turned our house into a polar bear habitat.

A regular occurrence around the Sharp household is the ninja sighting. Now, let’s be clear, there are no actual ninjas.

I'm back with my good friend Dave Atkins for another installment of The Wild Kratts. 

To most people this weekend is Father’s Day weekend—and to our family it was that, but it was also dance recital weekend.

When I told my wife what I was planning she said, “Wow, ok. Are you sure you want to do that?” I should have known then that I was biting off more than I could chew, but I did not pick up on her subtle clue that I was outside my mind.