Dear “Dad of the Year” jury, I submit to accompany my application these words that I pronounced after my kid asked to play in the backyard after having a whole park day at school: “Haven’t you played outside enough today? Let’s stay inside and play Switch instead.”

Spouse made the mistake of asking some innocent questions about Animorphs last night, and now kiddo is asking me whether worksheets or quizzes would be more pedagogically effective for the Animorphs Academy classes she’s planning for the weekend.

Kiddo and spouse got drenched by a surprise rain shower biking home from school today. Once dry, kiddo expressed more respect for me as a consistent bike commuter but less respect for me as the person who decided today was a bike-to-and-from-school day.

I have a bunch of small complaints about this movie, but I came away from it generally feeling like it was well done, so I’m erring on the side of a more positive rating. I don’t know if that makes me an uncritical movie watcher, but whatever. For the most part, I liked the aesthetic choices! It bugged me that the spaceship was modeled after a space shuttle, because that doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I did appreciate that the film went with shorthand in terms of set design instead of trying to make it realistic or whatever.

For someone who is actively apathetic about professional and collegiate sports, I can get dangerously close to being that dad at kiddo’s soccer games.

Kiddo had extra book fair money this morning, so she went back and bought her teacher a small book on a topic she knew her teacher likes 🥹

Currently doing dishes while answering kiddo’s questions about Animorphs worldbuilding. Might be at my dad peak right now.

Finally got the rest of kiddo’s soccer schedule! Relieved that there’s no conflict with Eurovision 2024, because that would be a real dilemma for our family.

Kiddo’s been visiting grandparents since Sunday, and her books are still strewn about the living room, so time to admit I’m part of the problem here.

Kiddo is at my parents’ for her spring break and has discovered a box of my old Animorphs books. I’m excited to share yet another nerdy thing with her but also thinking about how surprisingly violent that series is for purported kids’ books.

Turns out that biking to and from soccer practice might be a bit too much to ask of kiddo in a single night. At least I got to chat kids and bikes with one of the other soccer dads.

“By the way, daddy, I don’t really have laser eyes. I just made that up as part of the game.”

Doing some quick math to compare how old I was when I first watched Star Wars to kiddo’s current age. Also hoping my parents haven’t tossed out the cassettes I got at that age in case I want to hunt down a VHS player and watch it that way.

I’ve never really gotten any practical use out of my political science minor from college (understandable, since it was mostly a way to recoup classes after changing majors), but I appreciate how it makes me look smart to my spouse when we watch politically-themed media.

Romance is not my usual genre, but this came recommended by my spouse, who rightly guessed I would enjoy just how bonkers weird this story gets. It was a fun read!

“You’re not a dentist. You’re just my parent who occasionally checks my teeth.”

Everyone else seems to be getting over The Family Cold, so if I can just avoid catching it in the first place, we’ll be on track for a fun weekend.

“Dad, what’s a… lunch-ee-on?” “A Luncheon? It’s an evolution of Eevee. Lunch-type Pokémon.” “Dad! No, it’s not!”

Kiddo has gotten really into this series of books focused on coding concepts (which I have mixed feelings about, but at least they’re by Gene Luen Yang) and that led to the adorable moment of her trying to pronounce ifelse as though it were a word unto itself.

I kind of suck at most home maintenance/repair tasks, so I like to ask my dad for help when he’s in town. Either he knows what to do, and we take care of it, or he doesn’t know either, and I feel more like I can be a successful adult despite my lack of skill in this area.

In our family this January, severe weather means checking three different schools’ responses before figuring out what our day looks like. Today’s combination of decisions has worked out, but we’ll see how the rest of the week turns out.

On one hand, doing replacing snow days with “non-traditional instruction” feels performative and inequitable, and I don’t think I like it. On the other, if kiddo isn’t going to have school tomorrow, I don’t necessarily mind her having things to keep her occupied while I do some work.

Two minutes into her first experience with a main-series Pokémon game, kiddo realized she could name her rival “Chicken,” so I’d say we’re off too a good start.

Update: Kiddo’s learning binary led to bedtime stories being partially replaced by a discussion on how number systems work, binary and hex, and how Daddy used to pass notes encoded in base 3 to his best friend in middle school.

Kiddo surprised me today by learning how to count in binary from a library book. I’d checked out the book for her, but I wasn’t expecting such an immediate pay off. I’m skeptical of the “kids gotta learn CS” agenda, but I’m also proud of her when she does.

Shoutout to the girl who made an impromptu gift of a McNugget Buddy to my kid at tonight’s Christmas potluck. Didn’t even know those were a thing until kiddo became a recipient of one, but it was a cool thing to do.

I’ve been meaning to read (play?) this for months, ever since we bought it for kiddo after she recovered from being sick. Today, she’s sick again, so we went through it together. This continues to be a great series by Shiga! I might like the first one more, but only slightly. The Beyond is surprisingly thinky for a kid’s book, has interesting puzzles, and there’s a hidden ending that I know exists but need to figure out.

I love knowing that there’s a webcomic-to-children’s-book IP pipeline out there. Gives me some hope for humanity.

Kiddo learned what a bulletin board is from Stardew Valley’s quest mechanic and made one out of construction paper for asking for help with things around the house.

I know that video game adaptations of other properties are always dodgy, but how did they make Wreck-It Ralph’s so dang bad?

It has puppets, Christmas, and social justice—what more can you ask for? This is at least the third year in a row I’ve watched this with kiddo, and it still makes me laugh and cry when I watch it.

So, the thing is that I don’t really love the genre of the classic Disney movie, and this suffers from a lot of the issues of that genre. As a somewhat self-indulgent anniversary celebration, though, I think it’s a good homage to the past 100 years of Disney, blending the tropes of the genre with modern sensibilities and interesting animation.

Kiddo has no cousins on my side of the family, so during our Thanksgiving Zoom call, we successfully lobbied to add her to the siblings and partners gift exchange we do every Christmas.

Spouse and I have been using French to talk about Christmas presents in front of kiddo. Tonight, I got to hear spouse refer to “monsters of the pocket” so that kiddo wouldn’t recognize “Pokémon” in the middle of an otherwise incomprehensible-to-her sentence.

Spouse typically has a strict after-Thanksgiving rule for Christmas decorations, so the fact that we’re breaking them out today should tell you something about the week we had.

“Just as I suspected, Daddy… You’ve been listening to We Will Rock You!”