Y’know, the other parents never thank me for all the live color commentary I provide during our children’s collective moon bounce experience, but I’d like to think that one day, when those kids grow up, it’s *my* grave they’ll be jumping up & down on, in memory.

Can’t believe my kid made the cover of “Toddler Who Is Clearly ChillMogging His Dad” Monthly again.

I believe this what the kids call “flirtmaxxing.”

Dinner times have simply been more satisfying since I embraced my inner Kuato.#eatingfortwo #kuato

Hard to believe my little boy is already old enough to be traumatized by me dragging him out way past bedtime to see his first full moon.

“I call this next move the Bottle Rocket,” said Baby, before violently launching himself headfirst, spiraling backward off the couch.

Yeah, I don’t know. I guess when I told him the coffee sleeve keeps you cool, he really took it to heart.

Got the kid these nifty new noise-canceling headphones for whenever the president has a new accuser. He can take them off when this all blows over—or when the constant rubbing carves a slick bald racing stripe across the top of his head, whichever comes first.

Excerpt from my new webseries Comedian in Corridors Getting Charmin’ed. (Like the OG, we’ll rotate talent weekly, swapping in a new toddler to assault @myqkaplan.bsky.social with quilted 2-ply.)

I’m old enough to remember when saying you were old enough to remember something was something you didn’t have to be old enough to remember.

Lab work came back positive for Cousin Type A.

Teaching my toddler to tell jokes so that when I heckle him it seems less abusive.

Megan and I are teaching the kid how to go clubbing. It’s never really been our scene, so we’re hoping we can just send him along in our place instead.

In this house, we take a multimodal approach to child-rearing. Early education should be integrated and somatic — engaging visual, auditory, tactile, and information-dense olfactory cues that raise natural research questions like, ‘Seriously?’ and ‘Muffins.

Kid & I try to coordinate outfits in case we ever get Freaky Friday’d and have to slip into each other’s lives without missing a beat.

OCTOBER — 2025 COUSIN DINA IS MASTER OF THE BACKYARD ONLY ONE SMALL BOY STANDS BEFORE HER MOON BOUNCES ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS

Teaching my kid rhythm as a sneaky way to trick him into clapping for himself when he gets it right. 👏

He can’t tell time, he wouldn’t know a wristwatch if it bit him (he doesn’t even know that that’s not a thing wristwatches usually do), but none of that matters, because the kid loves bits!

I’ve never wanted anything as much as my kid wanted me to put these cookie cutters in my eyes. I’ve wanted to want something that much (just generally not enough to put cookie cutters in my eyes).

This is the story of my child realizing his mouth is like a tiny cave (vocal resonance?)—or, if you only pay attention to the background, possibly the origin story of a delicious soup.

It’s funny, as a kid, you’ve no idea what’s going on and the world seems terrifying, then you grow up & find out that what’s actually going on is waaaaaay worse than you could’ve possibly imagined, but instead of panicking you gotta pay taxes so the king of ghouls can attack you with his ghost army.

Kid’s induction into the assassin’s guild is going amazing.

As Megan is so fond of saying, “The family that wears headphones together…” and then I never quite make out the last bit, but I assume it’s very insightful.

What my nephew lacks in title-dropping brand maintenance instincts, he more than makes up for in dramatically billowable hair.

Introducing my kid to the paradoxical nature of life by singing him loud songs about being quiet. I’m what’s known in the teacher community as a “DILFP” (Dad I’d Like to F*cking Punch)

I think my kid can tell that I went into debt to get him his new desk.

That’s what I love about these Fasts & Furiouses, man. I get older, they stay the same mental age.

Tangled up in bluey

My child is growing up to be a true man of letters (i.e., bullying his dad into eating them as he watches from the toilet like a jolly well constipated king).

What’s up dog?

One of the most important things a parent can do is foster self-reliance. That’s why I’m teaching my son to beat himself.

The key to maintaining lifelong authority as a parent is to quiz your kid relentlessly from the moment they can barely speak. That way, they grow up believing you have all the answers and don’t even think to question it by the time they hit middle school and cognitively blow past you.

For no reason at alll, I have this picture filed away in my mind as “My Precious.”

I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do when my kid gets too big for me to hold him with one hand and do a selfie with the other.

Memorialized this, the first of what I can only assume will be many, many occasions on which my son is objectively dressed better than me (although statistically speaking we probably both got our outfit from my mom).

My darling may be only two, but even he can see right through this blatant Pluto erasure.

There’s a sweet spot right after dinner and right before the meltdown when Toddler becomes a really fun tiny drunk unproblematic frat bro. And I’m not saying it would be ethical to rent him out as an evening party mascot for local fraternities, but in this essay I will

One thing I’ve learned in life is that it’s never good to generate evidence. Finding evidence? Great. You could be a detective, or a scientist, or an archaeologist who punches Nazis. But making evidence? Best-case scenario, you’re the prop master in a student production of 12 Angry Men.

It’s wild how many kids’ stories center on kings and queens and princes and princesses. Then one day you grow up and realize it’s a thousand years of accrued pro-billionaire propaganda (adjusted for inflation). Anyway, the point is, we’re egalitarian antimonarchists in this house.

On some days, parenthood requires me to be a detective, decoding my toddler’s rapidly evolving word jumble to solve what turns out to be a surprisingly human mystery.

POV: You work from home and somehow you *still* end up sharing a cubicle.

Teaching my kid about friction early so he really understands what I’m talking about when I tell him he rubs me the wrong way.

Me to my darling child, my eldest son, my glowing lantern who daily illuminates the path through this dark world: yooo, you wanna get sh*tfaced?

It’s just so amazing to watch them grow up, to see all the little lights flicker on inside their heads, like take this photo series— if you look closely, you can see the *exact* moment he realizes it’s already too late.

When you’re staging a photo, lighting is everything. That’s why for the family shoot this year I used a stand-in of my exact mass equivalent (skinny goof; grumpy dog). I was gonna Photoshop myself in later, but it seemed hard and, honestly, no one’s noticed.

This Bumbo chair’s supposed to help your kid learn to sit up, but by the time he was old enough to use it, his thicc Blejer thighs didn’t fit in it, so I used it to train his neck.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked this kid to teach me how to use his dang abacus.

I truly do not mean to dismiss the deep love and analysis that people bring to sports fandom, but I absolutely think this should be a dubbing option for idiots like me.

My son used to hate the car because he was afraid he’d puke on rides over 15 minutes. But now he’s all grown up, and instead he gets excited—because he *knows* he’ll probably puke on rides over 15 minutes.

As a lifelong student of physics, I’ve always admired the elegance of simple machines—toddler on an inclined plane, grandfather about to get kicked in the face. Pure cause and effect, moderated only by gravity, time, and periodic yet ultimately insufficient Medicare payments.